Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Great Expectations, Major Schedule Changes and making SWG the finest MMORPG ever
I have read a ton of reviews from major magazines like EGM, Computer Caming World, GamePro, etc; gone over reviews from major internet sites on the game and even watched the X-Play (TechTV) review. The one thing I have found in common to just about every review I read was they considered the game boring. I play other mmorpgs and a mmofps and in those games SWG when ever brought up gets torn apart, Its rare for anyone to find much good to say about the game and I couldn't even give a close number to how many times I have heard people say, " I canceled my SWG account and never plan on going back". The reason I mention all this is mainly because these things are what help people to decide whether or not they are goin to pay for a game. Im sure marketing plays a role but i believe these factors have a larger influence including the simple word of mouth(players telling other players).
Its clear that SOE/LUCASARTS wants JTL to ship in October because this is the start of the holiday shopping season. But the problem i see that is more important then making the holiday sales is having a buyer base. With what has been expressed on these two threads about your announcement one your losing alot of customers that wont come back and others refuse to buy an expansion for a core game in which "The combat balance alone is the single largest player issue"-posted by TH on 1/23/04. With even non players getting negative feedback, from what was mentioned in the above paragraph, how many copies of JTL does SOE/LUCASARTS expect to sale. Yes SWG is offering a free trial period to try to lure more people into the game and I even noticed today that the price of SWG had dropped at Target (not sure if this was SOE/LUCASARTS decision or if Target just wanted them off their shelves). Is this enough for JTL to have a strong release. I am no marketting genious but im sure if the overall feel for SWG was more positive with players and reviewers that JTL would have stronger sales regardless if its released holiday season or not.
I am very concerned over the number of people claiming to cancel their accounts, with players not feeling good about a core game and with a few huge titles in the near future how many of the current community are goin to migrate to these next big things w/o looking back regardless of how well JTL does or not. I would suggest one of two things to keep this from happening:
1) Pull all the devs now from JTL and have all efforts put toward Combat Balance, then split the teams again to finish the jedi quest and JTL which may only be delayed a few months (less if its true that the CB has already been worked on).
With out the combat balance pub 10 is only goin to add a greater number of jedi's to the game, which is a huge mistake with combat being out of balanced already. Plus I personally can't understand what the logic is to adding force sensitvity skills to an imbalnce system, all this will end up doing is throwing the whole system further out of balance frustrating even more players to the point of canceling accounts.
2) Drop monthly charges and/or add SWG to SOE's All Access Pass.
I'm not saying doing this permanetly just long enough to keep the accounts active till when JTL and the Combat Balance has both been implemented. Alot of cancelled accounts is because players feel that they are paying full price for a game that feels like its in a state of beta testing where it could be going toward something else. An added benifit from the All Access Pass is that players already paying for games such as EQ or even Planetside may figure for the small additional cost to try out SWG and to do this they will have to pay for the core game(which makes money vs. free trials). Yes the idea of dropping the monthly rate or adding the game to the All Access pass means there will be less money coming in from SWG but arent you losing with cancelled accounts anyways. Atleast with active accounts SOE/LUCASARTS still has a chance to please the players, where as cancelled accounts your not going to always get that chance. In the long run the more accounts you can keep active now the better the chances are for SWG/JTL to be the best MMORPG in the future.
I truly hope that this post is looked at and thought about carefully. As of right now the only thing that keeps this game going is the STAR WARS name but SOE/LUCASARTS needs to realize that not all Star Wars Fanatics are gamers and not all gamers are Star Wars Fanatics. This is all about a game, players play games to enjoy and unless they are doing that they will move on.
ADD: Here is a link to the May Newsletter http://www.station.sony.com/newsletters/swg/newsletter_05_04.html
Please for the love of god bump back the second part of the jedi revamp and get the balance out prior to JTL.
I just love this reply.
BlueCelt wrote:
Still think its the worst idea and is a continued trend in misinformation. Refrencing a different post here I'm gonna post what has been said about the combat rebalance.
EDIT# This is not a slam on TH or any CSR type. Not their fault.
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TH
12/8/03
There is content in the works, GCW stuff, the combat revamp...
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TH 12/23/03
I know a bunch of this is in development, but it really is . The combat system is being rebalanced and going forward, its important to get your critical issues to klawlegna so we can act on it. The big bottleneck is communication and after the holidays, a lot of this will be ironed out and smoother.
Instead of "fixing this" and "tweaking" that and ending up with a wobbly 4 legged table because so many number are over-tweaked, we are just revamping the system, but that takes longer.
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TH 12/23/03
The short answer is that these items will be taken care of in the weapons balance. Specials, weapon stratification and the like will all be accounted for
(what ever happened to the weapons balance????)
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TH 12/23/03
I could, but everything is getting revamped. Id be more interested in hearing what you folks have to say on how you WANT it to stack since we are doing the combat balance.
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TH 12/23/03
If its big, its coming in the revamp and the Combat Balance
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TH 1/16/04 (does this one sound familar)
We are going to be revamping PvP, but in the meantime, we have to make some killer fixes to keep what is in live now, fun.
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TH 1/23/04
The combat balance is near and dear to my heart as are all player issues. I just have to juggle time, manpower and scheduling as well. What I do is I keep track of all the issues, label them and sort them. That way when I go to Blair, JustG and Runesabre and say "players need this fixed", its based on how many players are being effected.
The combat balance alone is the single largest player issue. It encompases about 34% of the Correspondent issues and much of the pain combat players are having. Pikemen, carbineers, commando heavy weapons, the cost of specials, HAM costs, all of that will be better when the combat balance is done.
The thing to remember is that because the combat balance touches so many other systems in the game, its going to take a while. The team thats working on this is working very hard and thats the best I can offer.
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TH 2/6/04 (holy cow...the combat revamp is mentioned INFRONT of the jedi revamp)
2. For PvP and Base battle folks, your time is coming. Once we get past the Combat Balance and the Jedi Revamp, the PvP balance is scheduled. Its a multi-publish update (roughly planned atm) where will consider battlefield possibilities, PvP upgrades and so on.
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TH 1/28/04
There are lots of ideas for sure, but right now, the team is focused on the Combat balance, the GCW, the Jedi Revamp, Correspondent/CSR issues, the publish theme, getting the existing professions improved and the dungeons.
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TH 1/19/04 (HAM revamp...assuming this is combat revamp)
The HAM revamp will address all of that. It will repair everyone's specials, it will solve the slow downs in combat and many other things. The challenge is that its a core game system and its going to take a bit because people from many different teams have to be involved.
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TH 2/12/04 (ouch...when I first read this...I thought it might come back to haunt him)
One message that is load and clear is that the combat balance is very important and we all know it is. So that means we have to get the combat balance done and in and polished.
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TH 2/13/04
For the most part, the combat balance is just coding atm
and this
There is much more to the combat balance. The biggest change you will see is in the way the HAM works. It will have more of a regen effect rather than a "diminishing returns" kind of effect. On top of this, defense stacking, specials and all of the combat "components" will be tweaked for more fun and challenging play
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TH 1/21/04
No, the development for the combat balance is being done all along. The develpment time for things like this is longer than most players realize. The "In Concept" cycle for combat roles per se is so that if players have any really great ideas pertaining what defines a profession's combat role, it can be added.
Once the basic design is done and the combat balance moves to the In-Dev phase, things can be tweaked a bit, but no major additions can be included. I thought it was important to get players ideas on combat roles and the dev team agreed.
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TH 2/13/04
I pushed very hard for the combat balance and the team agreed so basically they did the crackdown stuff and then did as much of the Combat Balance as possible. The combat balance items that were selected because they effected creatures so much. The first part of the combat balance was balancing the creature table
AND
I'll be preparing some Combat Balance stuff for next week that will help everyone get on the same page for going forward
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TH 3/3/04
This is something Im checking to see if we can address in the weapon balance part of the larger combat balance, but I don't know what the answer might be. And in any event, concentrating on these minor things before the weapon balance isn't productive. We'll want to look at things when the combat balance is on TC
AND
Actually the game will be easier at the high end because the "invulnerable" templates will be fixed and all professions will be on a level playing field, but in any event, this is something we need to focus on after the HAM revamp goes to TC in Pub 8 and after the Combat Balance goes into effect (tentatively Pub 9 and holding...)
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TH 4/12/04 (time for another meeting???)
We did have a meeting today and I fought hard to get the combat balance put back on the plate. By my reckoning, it represents about 35-40% of the player issues. Would you say thats a wrong direction? I'm always open to ideas that speak to the most players at any given time.
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TH 3/2/04
As far as combat template stacking, this is all part of the combat balance. I mentioned early on that we'd be going through a painful period and this is it. Once the HAM revamp hits the system (keep your fingers cross, it should be in Publish 8) all of these changes will make more sense. It will change the way combat plays and the majority of the discussion points regarding combat will change. Many players are still seeing the way the system was or is, and not as it will be.
The core interaction of combat pools will still work the same, but the way it feels in combat will be different. Once it goes to TC, Im hoping to see all the combat experts get online and play it out so we can tweak it - - it will be a critical period. I know Im anxious to see it
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TH 4/13/04
Atteke wrote:
Thunderheart could you guys put the combat balance on Test Centre in it's current condition like you did with the new HAM system in January? just so we can take a look at it.
-Thanks
Not really. Not for now anyway. You see, if we put it on Test Center, we'd have to push it out in Publish 9 with the the way the process works. Once a clump of code is integrated, "its in there". Thats where the sanbox that we've been talking about comes into play. This sandbox would be like a second Test Center, but configured in a way where it would be insulated from the live code and we would be able to push different versions out much easier without interfering with current process.
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TH 4/19/04
Originally, the Combat Balance was delayed and I worked with the correspondents to get a list of "must haves" from the various profession communities. Since that time, I've have stressed the importance of the combat balance with the team and we are getting it back into the mix, though as you might guess, the schedule is pretty full. Because of logistics, its going to take a couple weeks of information gathering on the technical side before we have a plan to move forward on. We will see the CB soon though.
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TH 4/19/04
We're in the planning stages now. I want to help set expectations as best I can. At this early stage, I would make the following comments:
- The biggest change in the CB that will be a "sensation", and by that I mean something that players will
change them after the CB gets published.
5/04
29/04
What will change is the mechanical balance - - especially with the HAM revamp portion of the CB
We can also further tweak the Smuggler’s combat role in the combat balance
The combat balance will bring elements of both to a Swordsman’s specials with the lions share of focus on re-tweaking the current specials to be more effective
These are two very important melee considerations for the combat balance
1 Answer to rule them all…
In closing, one thing that is very important to keep in mind is realistic expectations.The reality is that there are a huge number of player questions and answers that hang on the combat balance.What I don’t want to see happen is that because many questions revolve around a tight group of answers that the scope of the work gets expectations set so high that they are impossible to meet.We all have high hopes for the combat balance and the certainty that the Combat Balance is very, very important.We are putting a strong focus on special training and hardware to give the effort a leg up and will make this as cool as possible, but I wouldn’t look on it as a magic bullet, but more as an exciting change in direction.
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TH 4/22/04 (OUCH OUCH)
Why is it going to take more than a year post-launch to make this happen?
It's not. We've been talking about things internally a lot. I've stressed the importance of these changes and everyone agrees. We've been going over the implementation details for a couple of weeks now so that we can get this back on track. JustG will be going into more detail in his next State of the Game letter which will be coming out in the next couple of days.
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TH 6/3/04
This is definitely a topic we can discuss further in our upcoming Combat Balance focus threads.
...and this is another great example of something the correspondents and I will want community input on during the testing while the CB sandbox is up.
This is an early answer and is subject to change, but one of our goals for Commandos in the Combat Balance is to change the way Heavy Weapon modifiers work
...but we wont know until the Combat Balance sandbox is live).
When the Combat Balance begins (which will be soon), the correspondents and some players will be brought on to a special Combat Balance server
Lightsabers have been balanced against the system after the combat balance
The most important component to this is to keep giving good, solid feedback to your correspondent so I can bring these opinions to the development team while the CB sandbox is live.
You can look forward to sweeping changes in terms of functionality, speed, etc.But again, I stress, we talk about this topic a great deal in a conceptual form.The rubber is going to meet the road when we bring the correspondents and other players onto the Combat Balance Sandbox server
Again, absolutely.These changes are the types of things we want to address in the Combat Balance
Squad Leader
What is the SL revamp timeframe?. It's still going take place after the combat rebalance, correct?
Its going to be released in the same publish
To answer your question though, this is something we can, and will, talk about during the Combat balance
Yes, Black Sun Razor Knucklers will be back in the game after the combat balance
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TH 6/14/04
Waste93 wrote:
How about some info on the combat revamp. There are lots of rumors floating around on this one. And since the answer to just about every question the combat professions ask is "wait for the rebalance" it would be helpful.
Once we get through the Jedi Revamp, I'll be posting lots of thread. We'll have a lot of focus threads and the like and after P9, I'll start making the weekly roundtable have a CB focus to cover specific issues.
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TH 6/10/04
Weaponsmith
Are stun weapons going to see a major rebalance within the future?
Yes. Stun weapons (particularly stun batons) were never intended to be "the weapon" that everyone wants because it is the most effective. SWG’s weapons were always supposed to have a variety of useful and efficient weapons available, but here again, with all the tweaks and changes over the last 8+ months have caused a series of imbalances. This is definitely something that will be looked at during the combat balance.
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96)?96:this.scrollHeight)"
TH 7/15/04: I will be immediately working with the correspondents and the community to develop a list of pre-combat balance fixes
Gary Gattis's State of the Game Letter (around pub 8!): We are cranking on the Combat Balance, and we think development on it will span 2 more publishes.
So...which is it? Were we lied too? mislead? or ???
Message Edited by BlueCelt on 07-16-2004 07:26 PM
Again i know a little of marketing strategy, but i don't see the point of risking a disaster for more profit in this case.
Marketing experts call these maneuvers (the pre-xmas launch) "budget tricks", the last safe anchor to show that a product is well faring and healty.
Btw, i don't see the need to show JTL as the tool to consolidate the SWG environment. The game can be interesting and perfectly fit the SW atmosphere even without space expansion.
Yes, of course space is a BIG part of the SW experience, but the environment and the overall base of gaming possibilities are already (or should have) been set up with the ground game.
MadShade wrote:
I'm sorry but the SWG forum boards attracts some of the most ignorant and self absorbed people that I've ever seen posting on an MMO forum.
You're here, aren't you?
This is a corporation folks, they set a plan and they work from it. The "1000 players" that have canceled on "the last thread alone" are not the only people that play this game. As a matter of fact I would be willing to bet that a majority of players don't even read the forum boards and could care less about all you drama queens.
It's not just the number of players right now, it's the type of players they're losing. With you jumping from game to game I doubt you run a guild or a city. When you leave a game everyone shrugs and goes on with whatever they were doing the second before you announced it.
The people they're losing now are the people who have been with the game since day one. The players who run guilds, create cities, drop bases and in all cases they add to the game. The people that are pissed and leaving the game over this ARE THE END GAME CONTENT. That's tough to replace. You're an exception since you come and go MadShade, but many players are still playing because of the people in their guild and city. Once the foundation of those things takes a hit they're never the same. There will be a trickle down effect. And from what I saw in my guild/city this week, it won't be small.
What I don't get is why people on this thread think that JTL is going to make new people come to the game. 75% of this game after JTL will still be the ground game. Making ships, making money, resources, etc. You're not going to be in space 100% of the time. It's an expansion, not a game of its own. People who could stand the ground game have already tried it and left already for some reason. From my experience (TvX, SubSpace, CS) the type of players who only play twitch based games are not the type of people I want to be around in a game. You'll never find a bigger group of whining **edit** than XvT had. I think I'll be in WoW where it requires more than good reflexes, a super fast machine and connection, and the ability to shout "l33t" or "ez!" every few seconds.
Wouldn't bother me as much if I had a working ground game to mess with till the kiddies got burnt out.
The game works, there are no catastrophic failures and gameplay is fairly smooth. Now because the game doesn't work the way YOU want it to work you throw a hissy fit. Grow the hell up.
The game doesn't work the way the developers want it to. They admitted this over and over. Why do you think there is a CB in the first place. Are the developersjust throwing a hissy fit too?
You "grow the hell up". This is about finally getting the balanced and fun game we should have gotten on release. The people here aren't whiners, they aren't impatient. They are people who stuck by the developers over the last year and who thought in that the developers would do right by them and finally finish the beta cycle so they could play a finished product. They were betrayed, again. They have the right, and have paid more money into this game than you (who admit you left) so they have every right to voice their opinion on the matter. You don't like it? Why don't you stop your whining and go play the game? Or better yet, tell us rational reasons why you think leaving SWG in a broken state (again, the developers belief this) to release a potentially buggy expansion is a great idea.
Is SWG playable? Sure. Can you have fun? For a time you can. Is it a finished, balanced product? Hell no. Half the classes don't work. Buffs and Armor make the PvE game totally dull. The economy is so out of wack a newbie without help can't get anywhere. Etc.
New content? What the DWB and Corvette? Ruined by the imbalances in combat. I can't go there. I don't have a million credits for the armor I need. I've been playing since launch.
Coronet was shockingly reasonable last night... 
-3 subscribers my friends.
A year ago i'd never thought about an account cancellation could be possible, because this game was "Star Wars", enveloped all my expectations and my dreams about that universe.
Well now i'm really pissed off, after the "hype period" you have to maintain a credible schedule of improvemnts, and i've seen none from the big patch from august of the last year (yes for me that was the only real publish).
Sadly this is true, maybe Jedi improvements are interesting, but this is not KOTOR Galaxies or Buff Galaxies, this is Star Wars and everyone needs to born, live and die by the rules of a credible universe, you didn't have to create a fantasy world, you had to create a reproduction of a possible future *real* universe WITH fantasy elements (as it's SW).
You missed this, as every developer missed it in the past year: you don't have to build a system where people needs to be GOD to survive (City of Heroes does this in a perfect way), you need to build a world where players could be "human(alien) heroes" who fights for a better future, or simply people under a rule they barely can control or really comprhend in its evil (as such the migthy Empire grip should be).
You were able to create a great piece of work with crafting and the rares system, but failed to understand that we need a set of rules to fight credible battles and duels with weapons and defenses styles which the effectiveness resembles the ones we have in our present world.
So no uber one shot-one kill weapons or unbelievable armors, but SIMPLY (SIMPLY; SIMPLY; SIMPLYYYYY) a balanced way to fight creatures and other players.
FIRST comes this, with normal equipment, THEN we can speak about legendary weapons and armors, physical and mental enhancements, body protection and whatever you like to implement in a sane way.
Hell this game was more balanced at start than now!
MadShade wrote:
My problem with the forum whiners and complainers are not that they whine and complain, my problem is that they spam threads like this and work themselves up. Speak your mind and then let someone else say thier piece. The reason he archived the last thread is because so many of the same posters spammed that last thread and made it unmanagable.
That is your skewed perception, but not necessariy a reflection of reality. In truth, several 'repeat posters' in this (and the former thread) have come back to it in order to answer additional questions and rebut erroneous claimsput forth from SOE'slegion of uninformed opinion-makers.There is no malicious intent inthat at all, and it is clearly a function of debate to allow two sides to continually argue their point.There is no such thing as unilateral dialectic.
Everyone bashes TH and the Devs for lies and misinformation when you don't even realize that they don't have to have this much community interaction. They can't hire tons of people with your 15 bucks a month and even if they did, you can only have so many people working on the same project. Most of the people here are arguing from a position of ignorance. You have no idea what its like to do thier job and you don't know what goes into it. Some others havea sort of a clue and have some well thought out complaints.
Again, another exaggerated generalization. There are many 'constructive' posts in this thread that do not bash TH directly. In fact, these matureposts far outweigh any of the 'hate' posts written by disgruntled players. In general, everyone knows that TH is not the sole person responsible for this mess. (Heck, he wasn't even here for the first half of lies and deceit.)
As far as your reply about 'arguing from a position of ignorance', I can only shake my head in bewilderment; what a sanctimonious,half-baked, illogical statement. The truth is that several hundreds of people would have quit this game last year if not for the dev'sempty promises. Bend the facts anyway you like them, you know as well as I do that people would not still be playing this game had SOE, TH, and the dev's not made such ridiculous, empty promises for the last 8 - 10 months. You can defend them in the abstract; it doesn't in any way justify these actions in concrete terms. Just because you weren't looking forward to the combat rebalance, it doesn't mean that several thousand players weren't looking forward to it either.
As far as people "not knowing their [the devs] jobs"' is concerned: Sure, no one has any intimate knowledge of what the dev team does, unless you work with them. That said, however, there are many of us who do a tremendous amount of software development work and business management, and as such, canunderstand a certain measure of fact in regard to the overall process. The dev team has failed on several 'fronts' when it comes to fundamental software development strategies. What you see as common practice many of us see asreprehensible business practice.
Regardless of this fact, however, as a paying customer, it's not my problem or job---a year after the fact--to find excuses for a dev team that has continually removed itself from responsibility in regard tothe most basic issues and problems. Aspaying customers, we have every right to question why this game is still unfinished, incomplete, and seemingly beyond repair after having paid for the game and a year's subscription. You may be able to turn a blind eye to such crass business management; the rest of us, however, want answers, if nothing else.
I don't love the developers of SWG, I left the game before, I'll probably leave it again. This game has certain features that are awesome and others that kind of suck. The game when it was released was not meant to be focused on PVP ( I would have liked it to ). So combat balance and PVP will be down on the list of what they're going to fix. The people that are working on JTL will continue to work on JTL.... do you think that they're going to just stop development on JTL just because you feel they should publish the combat balance first? What the hell type of job do you work at.... because in the real world it takes time and money to swap employee's around.
This is one of the most narrow, "tunnel-vision" responses I've ever seen on this board. SWG was not supposed to be focused on PvP? Do you mean in it's actual implementation, or what was promised on the retail box? Apparently, the fact that the GCW has no purpose in this game has no meaning to you. Or the fact that professions that have been broken since day one are still broken is 'okay' by you.
Honestly, the only significant distinction you've made with this comment is to clearly show that you've likely engaged with maybe 20% of the core game mechanics (if that), and thus you have no vested interest in this game. The rest of it is an exaggeratedre-tooling of the obvious, so that SOE doesn't look like the crooks they are. How you can sit there and justify their use of development time/programming staff in such ostensibly inept ways is quite beyond me. Any company that employs such poor implementation strategies has no leg to stand on when it comes to justifyingtheir behavior.
I've grown up and as I've grown I've become a realist. I like to play MMO's as a diversion, its entertainment but it isn't my main focus in life. If I stop enjoying myself when playing a game, I stop playing it and play another. If you have decided to cancel then do it. Will I be happy about it... no I'll be indifferant. I don't care what you do, its your choice to make.... and yes it will send a message to the developers. Will it ruin the game? No, have you looked at the subscription numbers for Shadowbane? It's still up and running.
Again, you apparently have no long-standing interest in this game, or your parents pay for your subscription fees, and thus you don't feel 'robbed'. Good for you; you got lucky. Unfortunately, there are many of us who don't have that luxury. It's easy to sit there in a vaccum and twist the facts toyour own liking (especially when you choose to ignore every single, valid complaint)--unfortunately, many of us actually want this game to succeed, and that is why we aremad, annoyed, and (quite frankly) fed up withtheongoing deception. You, a person who really doesn't give a damn about the success of SWG, really has nothing but a one-sided opinion that has little weight for the rest of the SWG-playing public.
Speak your mind, let your voice be heard.... but don't spam the forums because people just won't listen.
Right. Basically, you're saying, "Speak your mind, but don't question those who tell you you're wrong. Speak your mind, but don't rail against those who refuse to ackowledge the differences between fact and personal fiction. Speak your mind, but don't try to convince anyone they might be morally wrong."
And people wonder how something like the Third Reich could come into power. Without a doubt, there will always besophists andapologists there to bail out a tyrant in his moment of need.
Message Edited by Metherian on 07-17-2004 09:32 AM