AGDC 07: Star Wars Galaxies Interview

At AGDC, WarCry's Rob "Sabrehawk" Cox spoke to the Star Wars Galaxies team about their IP-driven MMO. For quite some time, SWG has been among the most controversial of games and at the conference in Austin, the team addressed the past, present and future. SOE Austin studio head John Blakey and Senior Brand Manager Debysue Wolfcale featured prominently in the discussion.

"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.'

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And all of this is for naught. The shrunken SWG player base plus the far LARGER majority that quit over the CU and NGE still want their game back. Dribbles every 6 months is unacceptable.

Also, nothing has been done about bringing back what the NGE lacks that is the CORE of the problem: Open skills system... A combat system that is strategic, not button mashing, movement and combat that resembles reality, not Benny Hill on speed. Jedi meaning something... For those who don't know, Jedi used to be the pinnacle achievement not just in SWG, but that ANY player in ANY MMO could accomplish. It was nullified overnight with the NGE.

One of my friends pointed out that to watch the Star Wars movies in such a way as to make them resemble the current NGE SWG, you have to watch the thing in fast forward. And throw flashbangs at the screen whenever there is a combat scene. THAT is how bad a product SWG is and still is. Sure it's better now than it was when the NGE first came out. But how could it not have? That's not saying much.

Fact of the matter is, you could throw everything this Dev team has done in the last 2 years into the trash can, bring back the game as it was the day before the NGE, and they would get better press than they've ever had, more subscribers back than they will ever get no matter what they bolt onto the NGE, and a happier player base. What the Devs have done since the NGE is irrelevant because it's STILL the NGE, and we don't want it, never wanted it, never WILL want it.

Which is why, IMHO, they won't do it, even as classic servers.

The NGE game is still buggy as hell, broken, and ugly. Garish particle effects replace animations. Jedi fights resemble old men poking each other with canes at high speed. Mobs shoot through walls, hills, etc. And massive profession changes STILL happen, such as with Chapter 7's heroic mobs. The dev team in order to make their mobs a challenge saw fit to destroy the core abilities of one of the measely 7 combat professions left (Medic) instead of look at more innovative ways to do it.

This caused yet another forum and community meltdown.

Fact of the matter is, we've yet to see any proof at all of competence, much less brilliance, amongst managers and developers on the SWG team.

This is not going to get the job done.

Wnat the players back? Give us back our game. Smedley once again apologized for the NGE. Well, put some sincerity behind it and give us back our old game. You can take 100 years and use 1,000 tons of lipstick, but the NGE will still be a pig that we don't want to kiss.

And I find it insulting that the term sandbox was used to describe the current game. Pre-CU was a beach... CU was a sandbox... NGE is a litterbox. And you know what content fills those...

I registered here just to respond to this...

This interview is nothing more than typical SoE lies ans spins. This guy is trying to make it sound like they are making the game better with evey new publish, and the game is gaining subs by leaps and bounds and drawing back thier disgruntled veterans in hordes.

But the fact of the matter is that the NGE is still Junk. And its taken 2 years to get up to Junk status. The player population still isnt even close to what it was pre-NGE. The game is still buggy and flawed, and SoE is still trying to pull surprise changes on thier players. Case in point is the Medic changes in chapter 7 very recently. SoE announced they they were making drastic changes to the class just days before it went to live, upsetting a large number of thier player base yet again. Wich would have led to yet another round of mass cancellations. Wich would have been the 3rd mass cancellation Ive been able to witness. SWG doesnt have many more players left to be pulling crap like that anymore, but yet they still try.

SoE is now well known for thier lies, spins, and deceptions, just like what is being said in the interview. Dont believe me? Try this...

Log into your favorite MMO. Doesnt matter wich one. Any one will do. Go to a populated area, and simply mention SWG, NGE, or SoE in general chat, and see what happens.

Wow, what a great article! Wonderful use of slander, libel and outright lies!

I didn't see where you asked them about their blatantly illegal bait-and-switch tactic they used to sell the "Trials of Obi Wan" expansion, or the class action lawsuit they faced 2 days after the release of the NGE because of that. Next time, ask what prompted them to give out the refunds on the expansion. Also ask them if they refunded anyone for pre-paid accounts they canceled at the release of the NGE.

I also didn't see where you asked them about their atrocious attitudes towards what's left of their playerbase, or the fact that many functions in their game doesn't work as advertised.

How much did $OE pay you to write this? How much would you guys charge me to write one of these up for my company?

Well ... nice SWG advertisement. There were occasional glimmers of reference to fact, but otherwise, pure Marketing fluff.

Excessive length for the target audience though, I'm sure that would be Nancy McIntyre's feedback. Too much reading!

SOE has a very aggressive strategy for re-writing history and coming out with a defensible story about "what happened", and this piece is a fine addition to the revisionism ... but it's mostly fantasy where it's not just bald-faced lies. I hope they pay a lot to publish that kind of thing.

*edit -- two additional comments about John Blakely's claims. First, that a vice president of dev at SWG says things like "a lot more deep" really says it all about the level of thinking going on in that shop ... and second, using the word "sandbox" doesn't make your game a sandbox. Grouping is not sandbox. The players you drove away by abandoning SWG as a *real* sandbox are not going to be fooled by you using the word repeatedly ... but I'm starting to think you've fooled yourself.

That interview with $OE was a joke right, or spelling error with the title? It looked more like advertisement to me like you see on shopping channels.

On one hand you have this guy saying the NGE is going forward and players love it, yet on the other hand we have John Smedly the guy in charge saying that the NGE was a big mistake and that he is sorry!

The NGE is going forward while going backwards by putting stuff back in that was removed when the NGE went live. How can adding a watered down version of CH be claimed as being more in depth and wanted? Players wanted Creature handler back, so why give them Beast Master which sounds like something from WOW? That to me anyway sounds like hearing what the players want and deciding that you'll do your own thing anyway, and you know what happens when you usually do that, yet you still don't learn.

These thousands of players who love the changes and are returning are where? When I logged on for the free vet trial I could not see or find many players. So no the population is still dead and you know why. Until classic servers are implemented or the pre-cu code replaces the NGE, SWG is still a dead game.

Yoda will be turning in his grave with what you have done to Star Wars, and Pinocchio will be jealous of your big nose with all the lies $OE is telling, shame on you!

I'd have to say I agree with alot of what has been said here. the ONE thing I will not agree with is how great pre cu was. pre cu was the first and will always be heralded as the greatest thing since sliced bread. and it was great for a time.

however with that said, after playing around on the EMU, it showed me how much I missed the CU, the CU had style, took skill to excell at and was great, especially the PVP, it brought balance to pvp which is something that pre cu lacked, with the targetable mind bar and defence stacked melle stackers.there was real balance, real skill in the CU, not just button mashing the same buttons and then clearing cue to either clear states or dizzy knockdown. pre cu was all about the macros, while the CU was about food, skill balancing, group cooperations in pvp.

don't get me wrong if the tossed a pre cu server up i'd jump on it in a minute, but i honestly say I prefer the CU, those who don't never really gave it a chance.the TOO exspansion was set to be an amazing exspansion until nov 15th 2005. with the release of the NGE 1.0 which was the biggest broken piece of absolute crap i've ever played in my life, how SOE didn't get sued for releasing such a mess is beyond me, and it has taken them 2 long years to get the game back on track, however just like the typical SOE, they have taken damned near 6 months to release the next publish, when will you ever learn?

Liam I can get where you're coming from. The pre-cu was not perfect,but damn it was good. If they had just implemented the original combat upgrade which was meant to stop all these huge buffs and crazy dots SWG would be in a hell of a better place by now. Not the embarassment to Star Wars it currently is.

I actually never had a problem with the CU, I agree it was better balanced other than Combat Medics were still overpowered and it did take skill to PvP with all the food buffs and combinations you could try. But my problem was with the introduction of levels,level plain suck. So the perfect SWG would be a mix of pre-cu and CU, maybe an emu server will create this, you never know. :)

Nerfing Jedi to oblivion didn't help either, Jedi should be the alpha with risk vs reward. Removing perma death was a big mistake.

But to sum it up I think 99.99% of SWG vets will agree the NGE was a huge mistake that needs removed, not built upon.