Good communication is the key to success in nearly every endeavor. No company knows that better than Sony Online Entertainment.
It's been nearly two years since players of Star Wars Galaxies were confronted with the now infamous NGE, or "New Game Experience", which heralded sweeping changes to gameplay, massive cancellations and a general outcry for a rollback among those stayed.
There followed months of general silence from the SOE development team, other than assurances that a rollback wouldn't happen and that the team was committed to moving forward.
Nine months after the change, Alan Crosby, SOE's Director of Community Relations, addressed the issue.
"Where did we go wrong?" Crosby wrote.
"Delivery, we failed in our timing and communication. That is where we let you down most, SWG faithful, and for that I truly apologize."
In the year since Crosby's post, SOE has made many strides in an effort to reestablish their credibility in the game's community, both through improved customer service and better communication between the development team and the community.
These efforts have resulted in a series of changes to the game, which, while moving things forward, can also be viewed as the reintegration of things lost in the past.
The introduction of a detailed profession expertise system allowed players to customize their characters, while the Beastmaster system allowed players to once again breed and control their own pets. The House Pack-Up event allowed players to take an active role in freeing up space for new houses and player cities by targeting and clearing abandoned structures.
All of it comes down to an effort to respect the community while striving to deliver a good product.
"(The House Pack-Up) was our way of responding to a customer-initiated request," said SOE senior brand manager Debysue Wolfcale during the 2007 Austin Game Developers Conference. "We had seen that request and we wanted to respond to it, and it was a really good example of development and community all working together from the get-go."
The House Pack-Up also afforded former players a chance to return to the game through a 14-day account reactivation.
"We had a tremendous response," Wolfcale said. "This came on the heels of us implementing the Expertise system. We took each profession and added two additional customization paths for each of those professions, which allows you to customize your character, which was again responding to player requests."
By far the largest change resulting from these newfound communication skills was the addition of the Beastmaster expertise system, which is open to all players, regardless of profession, and incorporates elements of two older professions - Creature Handler and Bioengineer - that were removed during the NGE. But it's not just reintroducing old code.
"What we're doing is, like the Beastmaster compared to the Creature Handler," said John Blakely, SOE-Austin's vice president of development. "The Beastmaster is a lot more deep, a lot more integrated into the gameplay, a lot more supportive of the other professions, and things like that.
"You know, being fans of the game ourselves, we wanted to get those things back in. but it's not just a revisit; it's an improvement. I mean if you look at the players who have returned during this housing pack up event, what you get is a lot of people saying, 'Wow, this is a lot better than CH.'
"I really have a lot of fond memories of that, but the system the way it is now is a step up, and that's really what we wanted to do, re-envision it, and reinterpret it into a more integrated and cohesive system. Make it better. And that's what we're trying to do."
And, of course, make players - both returning veterans and current subscribers - a little happier along the way.
