Star Wars and Raph Leave SOE? 105
Gamespot reports that Raph Koster, chief creative officer for Sony Online Entertainment, has left the company. While Gamespot seems to confirm this news, there are a number of MMOG-related rumours swirling at GDC. Mythic may be in EA's sights for acquisition, and Sony Online may soon be losing the rights to the Star Wars license. IE: No more SWG. Grimwell online has a rundown on these virulent rumours. Chris Kramer (from SOE) said words to the effect of "We're in it together for the long haul." SWG will be staying with Sony Online for some time to come.
It seems (Score:1)
Re:It seems (Score:2)
Re:It seems (Score:2)
Of course, it'd lack the characters, and the dialog would be hard to enforce among the player base, which were two of the most interesting features. But a MMORPG based on smuggling and crime, ala Traveller but with no aliens I think could be real fun.
What I've heard pointed out is that any game based on a license is doomed to fail, simply because the licensing itself costs money that takes away from otherwise building a superior development environment. While it builds in a player base
Re:It seems (Score:1)
While the Star Wars games are hit and miss, there are certainly hits in there.. XvT comes to mind, as does last year's Lego Star Wars.
Re:It seems (Score:2)
Re:It seems (Score:2)
Re:It seems (Score:2)
There are many licensed games that are genuinely good. The idea that licensed games are all bad comes from the fact that they (even the bad) tend to get heavy marketing support and when they flop everyone knows, and many have played. Usually, when a non-licensed game is bad fewer people play it and it never gets enough mindshare to be memorable...there are exceptions, of course, but the memorable non-
Re:It seems (Score:1)
Brand X, er, that's generic X as in the unknown, not X-men, is a hot property.
Company who owns Brand X wants to take advantage of new media market M
Company doesn't make market M things, so licenses it off to someone who does
Brand X is popular, so only large corporations can afford to license it
Company in market M then has a brand they paid a ton for, and must sell it well to even dream of clearing a profit, much less a big one
Company having spent so m
Re:It seems (Score:1)
Maybe you're disagreeing and asserting that all non-licensed games are good? That's not true, either.
I don't think you understand what the words "I have to disagree" mean...
Re:It seems (Score:1)
I know, some people are going to mention Torment here - we'll just disagree on that point, shall we?
Re:It seems (Score:2)
I expect next year's E.T. MMORPG to be a smashing success...
Re:It seems (Score:1)
Re:It seems (Score:1)
"Groundbreaking" is also misused a lot. The most recent Wired has a brief (i.e. bullet list) article about the origin of the Orc. One of the items is the "groundbreaking" game World of Warcraft. I will admit WoW broke ground for number of customers, but as a game it was hardly groundbreaking. It looks pretty good, but the gameplay is nothing special. Although I suppose that is at least an advantage over SWG, who shows it can get messed u
Re:It seems (Score:2)
Re:It seems (Score:2)
Hopefully Star Trek online and Lord of the Rings online won't be managed by SOE.
Sony is left with some things to say... (Score:1)
"Who's scruffy-lookin'?"
"Where did you dig up that old fossil?"
"And I thought they smelled bad on the outside"
"It's not my fault!"
"I've got a bad feeling about this"
"Then I'll see you in hell"
Re:Sony is left with some things to say... (Score:1)
Seriously though, it's funny how none of us are thinking "Hey Sony must feel like they're taking a bath on this!"
Worst yet, Sony's investors are probably thinking "Sony is successfully reducing costs by cutting online games that poor hopeful shmucks thought would be good. Good for them for treating customers like crap. Buy their stock."
Re:Sony is left with some things to say... (Score:2)
>"Who's scruffy-lookin'?"
> "Where did you dig up that old fossil?"
> "And I thought they smelled bad on the outside"
> "It's not my fault!"
> "I've got a bad feeling about this"
> "Then I'll see you in hell"
You forgot the One True Line for SOE/SWG:
"Pull out, Raph, you can't do any good back there."
Re:Sony is left with some things to say... (Score:2)
No Suprise here (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe the same thing happened to SWG where they changed the game a great deal too much.
I don't know to many MMO players that are happy with the way SOE is doing business. It seems that in SOE's quest to gain more patronage, they fail to realize that the customers already in the game are playing it for the way it is. They don't want it to change drasticaly to gain other players that are looking for a more laid back game play.
If i wanted to play a game for 30 minutes and acomplish something i would play WoW. If i want to play a game that i won't be able to do anything except travel across the map in 30 minutes I'll play EQ2. For me i loved the complexity of the game. They've done away with that. And in turn they have done away with my subscription.
I see this as a signal that their are alot of troubles brewing within SOE.
Just a gamers Opinion though
Opposite for me and EQ2 (Score:4, Informative)
Then I read a couple of reviews of the "revamp" of EQ2 and I went back to take a look. I was really impressed by how far it had come and decided to continue on with my character. There's a lot of depth there that was lacking when it first came out.
Traveling around in EQ2 isn't bad...no worse than WoW. But then again, I'm one that thinks traveling around EQ1 is WAY too easy than it used to be. The "good ol days" for EQ1, to me, was only the original game and the first two expansions...Kunark and Velious. After that it was the vocal whiners that got the game to where it was almost "teleport directly to the mob, have the mobs line up, die automatically for you, you get the experience, you get whatever you needed. NEXT". It was fun when it was more of a free-wheeling place, where you had to sell your own stuff, where you had to get a port out of some place. The world of EQ seemed SO big back then. Taking a Barbarian from Halas to Freeport was a daunting task of running through the Karanas. It was great. It was an adventure right there. Now...meh...you're a barbarian in Halas just gate up to the Plane of Knowledge and go wherever you want. No biggy. And to me, no fun. Again, that's just me. I'm a little goofy.
But I've been having a blast with EQ2. Well, not at the moment as all my attention is on Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.
Re:Opposite for me and EQ2 (Score:2)
I understand exactly what you feel about EQ. I loved the 'Old World' game back when you had to get a Druid or a Wizard to port you. I liked that you lost experience when you died, that simply getting from A to B was dangerous, when the whole point of getting to B was that B was dangerous. I liked having to sit in East Commons with a hundred other people hocking my wares. It was fun and community. I miss that.
Re:Opposite for me and EQ2 (Score:1)
In this manner, there can be no "busted economy" because there is no economy. If you can never, ever get something to drop at your level that is better than what you can get for 5p at the bazaar, what's the point of going out to adventure? To grind? But people hate grinding. So what's the point?
The point,
Re:No Suprise here (Score:2)
No doubt this is true. But it is also true that WoW is the 800 pound gorilla in the MMOG industry, with somewhere between 5 and 10 times the customer base of any other MMOG. So if SOE decided to take SWG in a direction that made it more WoW-like, then I suppose it's easy to see why.
Raph Koster = Non-fun Games (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Raph Koster = Non-fun Games (Score:1)
SWG's current lead is actually doing pretty well with it(all things considered), so I hope SOE is able to retain the necessary licensings to run SWG.
Re:Ultima Online in 1997-2000 was fun... (Score:2)
Re:Ultima Online in 1997-2000 was fun... (Score:1)
> Raph intended. They didnt plan for it to become a murder
> fest.. but people basically did whatever they wanted.
When UO realized a larger chunk of their sales were 13 year olds getting their buddies to join, too, so they could stand in small gangs outside the cities and loot the role players instead of the monsters, they had to make a choice: role players or pk. They chose pk. So the roleplayers largely left, drying up the supply of suc
Re:Raph Koster = Non-fun Games (Score:2, Insightful)
He impressed me as a guy with a hell of a lof knowledge who obviously spent a LOT of time thinking about how to make these games work but, was way too sure of himself. He wrote with the confidence of someone who truly believes he had it all figured out a long time ago.
I could just picture him shooting down ideas left and right bec
Re:Raph Koster = Non-fun Games (Score:1, Insightful)
One of Raph's "Laws" for Virtual Worlds reads
"It is not a game, it is a service"
Therefore, it is not a surprise that he fails at the game part. His games are virtual world experiments - they neglect the game part. The part that makes MMORPGs like World of Warcraft successful is that they are games. They don't try to be virtual world, society or government simulations. They embrace that they are games.
And please spare me your personal opinion about WoW, it
Re:Raph Koster = Non-fun Games (Score:1)
Re:Raph Koster = Non-fun Games (Score:1, Insightful)
The number of people who left the game right after buying it because they were PKed over and over again greatly outnumbers the number of people who were left in the end.
Its the same scenario as SWG. A simulationist minority was holding out for a game that failed to appeal to the masses. Now making a niche game, that is what you want. But SWG was never supposed to be a niche game, and therefore this is its greatest failure. Now the Avatar of the simulationists has been fired from a job he should
Re:Raph Koster = Non-fun Games (Score:1)
Take the baddest ass human gunfigh
Maybe a purge is needed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe a purge is needed... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Maybe a purge is needed... (Score:3)
Re:Maybe a purge is needed... (Score:1)
Because we all know that, in real life, seven people with rifles can stand there around a dog shooting at it, while an eigth stands there and hoses it with a flamethrower, and the dog not only doesn't die, but continues to fight back for 30 seconds or more before dying. Not screaming instantly and trying to flee.
Hmmmm...let's go grind on llama-giraffes since they're the equivalent fighters to a stormtrooper with rifle. How utterly fun. How utterly Star-Warsy.
Re:Maybe a purge is needed... (Score:1, Informative)
Actually, I *believe* that the Rancor was a gift to Jabba, not raised since he was a little "rancorling." And the "beast tamer" disapproved of Jabba's treatment of the rancor (ie, feeding him people now and then), and was actually pla
Re:Maybe a purge is needed... (Score:1)
> in "Tales from Jabba's Palace."
Writers fill in pap all the time. If it doesn't appear in the movies, it doesn't count. As far as I'm concerned, a lightsaber could still cut "The Mandalorian Armor". Lucas went through the neck simply because he didn't want to have to have it not be able to cut something. If push came to shove in a movie, down goes the armor.
Re:Maybe a purge is needed... (Score:2)
I was always under the impression that Rancors were
Re:Maybe a purge is needed... (Score:1)
Perhaps SWG's time has come. (Score:1)
Re:Perhaps SWG's time has come. (Score:1)
Re:Perhaps SWG's time has come. (Score:1)
That from the same company that thought half the people playing the game should spend that downtime with a book in their face "meditating" for the joy of getting konked on the head by a wandering monster
SOE - so what, EA to buy Mythic!?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
But having yet another solid and profitable independant developer like Mythic sucked up into the oppresive regime that is EA?!? I find that to be a much more disturbing thought.
-Rick
Re:SOE - so what, EA to buy Mythic!?!? (Score:1)
Mythic did not lose a lot of money on Imperator. They hadn't spent *that* much effort on it. And what they did create (technology wise) is being used for Warhammer.
I've played all the MMORPGs out there. Nothing comes close to Dark Age of Camelot. Well maybe WoW does. But WoW loses out on the end game.
The thought that EA will buy out Mythic makes me very sad. I can onl
Re:SOE - so what, EA to buy Mythic!?!? (Score:1)
Re:SOE - so what, EA to buy Mythic!?!? (Score:2)
-Rick
Losing Rights to SW? Rumours++ (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Losing Rights to SW? Rumours++ (Score:1)
Re:Losing Rights to SW? Rumours++ (Score:1)
Re:Losing Rights to SW? Rumours++ (Score:2)
I wouldn't be suprised at all if this rumour was more than just a pigment of someone's imagination.
Re:Losing Rights to SW? Rumours++ (Score:3, Insightful)
Smedley Getting the Axe at SOE. This is a bonus entry, not from GDC. Something I was actually told last week and wanted to sit on and fact gather. At this point with Raph gone and SWG in question... it's hard to think this wouldn't be on the table.
I wouldn't expect Smedley to say anything else.
Him leaving wouldn't change my opinion though: I will never play an SoE game again.
Two words : Damage control (Score:3, Insightful)
LucasArts isn't exactly Nintendo when it comes to protecting its brand names but they're not stupid enough to continue to let the Star Wars name be burned alive. (SWG is the laughingstock of MMOs these days.)
Re:Two words : Damage control (Score:2)
Compared to second-generation MMOs such as DAoC (I consider MMOs such as FFXI a
Re:Two words : Damage control (Score:1)
Then theres the nitpicking reasons:
It never fully addressed the gameplay issues of EQ1. (EQ1 is considered to be the MMO to start the end-game grind use.)
Its graphics/art were not too great of an improvement. (Not to mention the fact that its system requirements at launch were considered to be high-end.)
It was still considered to be newbie-unfriendly. (All MMOs are but EQ1 and 2 are two of the biggest offenders.
Re:Two words : Damage control (Score:2)
They weren't just considered high-end, they were high end. I had a machine that had been top of the line 3 years earlier. I had upgraded it with a new video card and gotten 1gb of memory, and EQ2 was still just barely barely playable. In town it was slideshow. WoW, on the other hand, played just fine.
In fact, my wife and I were planning on doing EQ2,
Me too. (Score:1)
Me
Re:Losing Rights to SW? Rumours++ (Score:2)
Believe me, buddy, we wished it worked that way, too.
Then you wouldn't have been nerfing left and right. You'd have been fixing the problems instead. Boost the warrior instead of tearing down the necromancer, if the necro's pet can solo a warrior. Boost the magician's pet instead of tearing down the necromancer. Boost the monster AI instead of
About time for SWG (Score:1)
Note that none of this means the game should be made "my way". With a title like that, they should have made an rpg with mass appeal.
-Jeff
Re:About time for SWG (Score:2)
> should have been a slam-dunk title
I don't know. Sword games you can kind of get away with the idiocy of swords being weak. But a gun game? It may have been doomed from the start.
Consider the next great thing after LoTR MMORPG, Star Trek MMORPG. Are you gonna tell me you're forbidden from setting your phaser on disintegrate until you're level 50 because Star Fleet Academy won't let you? And, of course, by that time every thief in an al
The problem is the genre (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, they have tried to throw in distractions such as housing, and guilds and different quest branches. (I.E. questing to gain a title or questing to gain an item, etc..)
I purchased EQ2 recently, because a year or so ago it wa
Re:The problem is the genre (Score:2)
It was pretty neat, and gave you a sense of progress. Unfortunately, they decided that it was too confusing for newbies and scrapped it in February.
Re:The problem is the genre (Score:1)
Re:The problem is the genre (Score:1)
OTOH, advancing a character through quests is a gamestyle that has a long pedigree...going all the way back to the original D&D. Plenty of people seem to like it, so it's not too surprising that plenty of games will pro
Re:SOE responds on the forums.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Today there are dozens of Dev and producer posts that are out to counter the new wave of horrible press their lack of work and attention has created. It's all a joke so they can say, "Look how
Re:SOE responds on the forums.. (Score:1)
Every craftable item is useful.
Anything you need, another player can make.
You don't have to be some sort of gunman, swordsman, or fighter to have fun.
Can you believe they trashed that?
EVE vs SWG (Score:3, Insightful)
Those who want sword fights, magic powers, alien landscapes, weird creatures and chainmail bikinis have pretty much every Fantasy RPG to play.
Those that want wear funky armor, control an army of robots, and use a blaster that allows you to shoot first can play City of Heroes.
Aside from Branding, exactly who is SWG trying to appeal to? Everything they might have is being done better by other games.
Re:EVE vs SWG (Score:2)
Re:EVE vs SWG (Score:1)
Re:EVE vs SWG (Score:1)
Personally I found Eve to just be plain boring, and the space combat sucked. In the end, neither SWG's ground game nor Eve were worth playing to me. Granted, I haven't checked out the NGE, but I doubt I'll be doing that anytime soon.
Re:EVE vs SWG (Score:1)
How to ruin a sure thing (Score:5, Informative)
Star Wars is one of the most regonized and highly regarded franchises among video game consumers. Players have high expectations, and why shouldn't they? There's enough material there for an engaging and interesting MMO. One has to wonder, how could you mess up a Star Wars MMO?
Well, here's how:
1. Launch a buggy game your beta testers tell you is nowhere near ready.
2. Have no player-controlled starships. Space is just like "zoning" in EQ.
3. Have no class balance, and then screw up class balance. Make sure your producer's favorite class (pet handler) is insanely powerful at launch.
4. Make sure entire classes, (droid manufacturer), are completely foobar.
5. Totally mismanage player relations, eventually cutting off public access to the forums to hide discontentment. Be sure to have a privately run, but public web site up for the producer where he talks about how players are sheep, more or less.
6. Planets aren't even frickin' round, and they have edges which are just high mountains.
7. Make sure questing is so stupid players don't even bother to read the templated instructions for what you are doing, and instead focus on the one or two variables per template. (Go here, blow up nest, run back.)
8. Make sure PvP is totally hosed at launch.
9. Don't bother to react to major economy-ruining bugs for days, even after reports flood forums, so that money is completely devalued.
10. Make the #1 fantasy of every player, becoming a Jedi, completely out of reach to smart players who maybe, like, have a job, and within the reach of mindless drones who play your game 24/7.
Anyways, the game was fscked all along, and the final news that the combat/professions system needed another overhaul was just the coup-de-grace.
RIP; lesson learned for Lucusfilm.
You left out the big black eye from opening day. (Score:2)
Make sure to have one sign-in / credit card / account server for opening day. Have thousands of people, who took the day off from work to get their account signed up and the player name they wanted on day one, scream in agony as the system wouldn't let them in.
SWG broke my heart. I waited for that game for years. I played UO, which was fun, but wanted SWG. When they announced it, the screenshots started coming out, I got more excited. When I found out that you could set up equipment to min
Re:You left out the big black eye from opening day (Score:2)
Not a religious experience, but one of satisfaction.
Could it have been even better? Of course.
Re:How to ruin a sure thing (Score:2, Informative)
I think, when it gets right down to it, the current MMOG player base responds more positively to a traditional level-based grind system than the skill-based craziness they had in the original incarnation of SWG.
FWIW, they fixed the problem you listed in item #2 when they added Jump To Lightspeed some time ago. JTL is a lot of fun, if a bit repetitive
Say it aint so!!! (Score:1)
Re:Say it aint so!!! (Score:1)
I still play DAOC a lot and I cant wait for mythic to bring out Warhammer also... first time I've heard of the rumours but if so it will seriously put that purchase into question
About dang time (Score:1)
In SWG, well that was what i believe to be his first major project, and it showed at release. The game was a hack job that they spent months more fixing and duct taping. It took months to get to a working state and a year after the game was going great. THen they decided to change directions. A year later after everyone got used to it, they changed directions again.
I'm s
Honestly.... (Score:1)
Re:Errr... I think its the other way around. (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone wants to kill the hero.... And take his things and send him nasty
"SOE Looses SWG licence? Debunked." (Score:2, Informative)
I will start buying Sony products again...bwahaha (Score:1)
Now, if they get rid of some of the other mentally handicapped execs at Sony, I might stop boycotting their products.
For instance, they could get rid of whoever greenlighted that whole rootkit fiasco. I haven't heard of any firings related to that nightmare.
Leave it to Sony to start making me think Microsoft
At least half true (Score:2, Informative)
So, by now people have seen the news. Yes, it is true I am leaving SOE.
Why? Well, I've been here for gosh, almost six years maybe? It's been a good ride, and I think we've gotten to do some really fun and interesting work. But I am getting interested in doing some stuff that is a bit off the beaten path -- really, anyone who has been reading the blog can see that! -- and while SOE feels it's really cool stuff, it's just not where they are at right now. My contract
Re:At least half true (Score:2)
I think this is largely true. I think that Koster is a very gifted and visionary designer who's talents and interests make him terribly unsuited to be the lead designer on 'the Star Wars MMORPG'. SoE made a terrible error in employing him in this capacity, and I suppose he made a terrible mistake in accepting the job (though I can understand why he might).
I've long said that the gam