Jun 12
Boobs, Galaxies
The theme for this week’s Escapist is gaming oopsies. I’ve got an article in it, with boobs!
The Breasts That Broke the Game
Halfway through 2006, a huge story went unnoticed by game journalists. Barely a cursory glance or raised eyebrow marked its passage. Early in May the Entertainment Software Rating Board quietly changed Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion’s rating from “T” to “M,” forcing a recall and re-labeling of the game, and costing Bethesda a fortune. The problem? Bethesda had nothing to do with it.
Much more interesting? A great loaded look by Allen Varney at one of the biggest debacles in MMOGdom: The SWG NGE.
As WoW barreled toward 5 million subscribers, SOE launched SWG’s Publish 25. The NGE replaced the combat system with a shooter-style twitch game, reduced the value of crafting and entertaining, and collapsed 34 professions into nine classes. Jedi Knight powers, once obtained only after torturous grinding, were now widely available. Creature Handlers and Bio-Engineers, previously stunted by the CU, vanished.
The launch, like the original game’s, went horribly: awful bugs, broken quests, lag. But these paled beside the main problem. For an unexpectedly huge number of players, the issue - the overriding issue that has burned in their heart down to, lo, this day and hour - was betrayal.
edit: After reading some comments by Raph over on his site, I went back and read to the end of Varney’s piece more carefully. He starts off fairly strong, but strays into the realm of fantasy. Smed’s apologized about a billion times for the NGE, for starters. Bad play, Varney.
edit2: And again, they still will not let it go. Sorry Jeff. “Flunky”? You should complain. I’ve got email addresses if you want em’.
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I’m really truly sorry to inform everyone that if SOE was truly sorry for the NGE, and as deeply sorry as Smedley tries to make it out to be, the NGE would of been reverted within a month of it’s release to either be rebuilt or discarded. Neither happened, has happened, or will happen. They don’t give a damn about the fact that they screwed over the majority of the SWG players.
And I’m not sure what Raph is doing now. He seems to be proposing that the NGE just magically appeared and installed itself on the SWG servers. The blame lies somewhere and if Raph wants to clear the names of the top dogs then he is just blaming everyone underneath. Raph is tired of hearing about SWG and everything to do with it. I don’t blame him. His name has been thrown around more than any other SWG developers and he was long gone come NGE time. SWG has been plagued with poor decisions since it’s inception… you can’t tell me that doesn’t have something to do with SOE and their practices which are the only common link between the pre and post Raph era.
I don’t know about everyone else, but SOE has built a business on telling everyone just to “move on”. I for one won’t stand by quietly as they try to expand into different directions and spread their industrial waste. The SOE game players log into today has no guarantee of being there tomorrow. That is a fact that no one should stop talking about anytime soon.
“He seems to be proposing that the NGE just magically appeared and installed itself on the SWG servers. The blame lies somewhere and if Raph wants to clear the names of the top dogs then he is just blaming everyone underneath.”
Some of the folks whose names get tossed around are far from “top dogs.”
But no, of course there were people behind it, and reasons why they did it, and mistakes made, and all the rest. I am just saying that we keep rehashing stuff that is incomplete at best, if not inaccurate. It doesn’t help anyone.
“But no, of course there were people behind it, and reasons why they did it, and mistakes made, and all the rest. I am just saying that we keep rehashing stuff that is incomplete at best, if not inaccurate. It doesn’t help anyone.”
It does help — it helps the players. History forgotten is history repeated. And the above poster made a legitimate point, which you ignored — if you folks were “sorry” the NGE would have been yanked within weeks after the uproar. Why wasn’t it? There was even a petition, which I signed. That, and everything else, was written off by you and others. Now, after the shitstorm has reined down on your heads do you backpedal. Crocodile tears you shed.
Ok, so I’m out of things a few days and the web explodes again on an NGE-related topic? Come on guys. Just a few things have happened since then including SWG itself getting, like, better and stuff.
I swear, the I-was-abused angst about the NGE rivals only the launch of you-mean-I-can’t-be-Luke SWG itself. It has long since surpassed even the trammelizing of UO as the hot button issue of our time. But at this point it’s the Paris Hilton of topics: painfully obvious even to those partaking that there simply isn’t any reason to be talking about it anymore other than carthartis by inertia.
I really wish people would let it go.
You say in an edit addendum to your take on the original Escapist piece:
“Smed’s apologized about a billion times for the NGE, for starters”.
This is absolutely untrue. I know because I have been waiting and searching for such an apology across both the virtual and hard media almost since the NGE was launched. Mr. Smedley has acknowledged that, in the words of another great but slimy communicator, “Mistakes were made” but he has certainly not apologised for them.
I mention this not just to vent the spleen of a customer scorned - of which hell hath no fury like etc etc - but because I believe it to be important to the whole NGE saga which, in turn, is important to the whole MMOG business.
Mr. Smedley cannot apologise for the NGE for two reasons:
Firstly, because it would imply that customers ran the game and not its managers;
Secondly, because it would imply that there was some mismanagement of the game which, in turn, would affect his company’s relationship with the licensor, LA, and, of course, his own bonus-related salary.