dkylep9904

It's SOE. They'll manage to find a way to screw it up somehow. If nothing else, Smedley will take a personal hand to ensure its ruination. Who knows what will happen? Seriously, when you look at the roster of SOE games over the years, just marvel at the sure fire hits that they've managed to ruin with their ineptitude. Sometimes they need to go beyond the game being bad (because there have been a few games that they just can't mangle bad enough for people to stop playing them) and they do out of game stuff to make sure their subscribers are angry with them and want to quit.

After witnessing the way SOE runs their games and such I will never purchase another SOE product. At least not until substantial changes are made demonstrating that they are not money-grubbing whores who only care about subscribers' money instead of providing good service and good games.

@Jef Reahard

You're right. I even said that I didn't want to bring that up. As you can tell, I played SWG at one point. I will say thank you for continuing to respond. I will admit that LucasArts did have some direction in telling them to make changes.

Anyhow, enough of that. Thanks for responding and I will perhaps moderate my responses on this in the future to better reflect that SOE is not solely responsible for the changes.

If this isn't enough to get Smedley fired, I don't know what will be. Never in the history of gaming has a person managed to screw up so many games this massively, not to mentioned actively destroying subscribers with his cock-eyed decisions. All in the interests of 'saving money' or some such. So much for all those people praising Smedley about how he learned his lesson, and how he wants to listen to his customers.

Yeah, he'll listen to you, and then laugh about it afterwards and he counts his millions made from the rubes who are too dense to cancel SOE accounts and continue giving them money.

@Jef Reahard

Sorry Jef. I'll give you that the 2011 closure was caused primarily by LucasArts. I don't know enough about the specifics on that case. Of course, the Great and Mighty Jowled One (aka; George Lucas) might have had something to do with that. God knows he seems to delight in disappointing Star Wars fans.

But Smedley has taken personal responsibility for the NGE debacle. He has defended it numerous times as 'necessary' to combat dwindling population numbers. I don't want to rehash old debates or dig at old wounds of some of the people who read this, because God knows that even today talking about the NGE in Galaxies brings up loads of vitriol (rightly so in my opinion, but I digress). I simply can't let you try and give SOE a pass on what they did though, claiming that LucasArts was the primary culprit for the changes.

Hell, the developers themselves (even after the fact on personal blogs) all claim that the NGE was their desired direction for the game and that it was a 'good move'. Then Smedley saying things like "We've learned from the NGE and plan to listen to customers in the future" indicate where the responsibility truly lies. I'm sure that LucasArts had to okay the changes, which they obviously did, but SOE and Smedley were the people behind the NGE.

And let's face facts: no matter how much people want to claim otherwise, the NGE destroyed the game. Yeah, yeah, it still had worthwhile features even after the NGE. But their word of mouth (and the game itself, mechanically speaking, for a long time afterward) was so low, and so many customers were cheated, that they would never get back an iota of the customers they had when they pulled their bait-and-switch money grubbing move.

Don't try whitewashing SOE's primary role in this especially, because people directly involved (and I don't just mean as subscribers) know plenty differently and have said so numerous times in public and on print.

Lol. And people actually question when I post about SOE and Smedley and claim that I just 'can't let go' of hating them for SWG. I try to explain that they're cartoonesque corrupt; that SOE doesn't care one whit for its customers beyond what kind of money they can make from them, no matter how that money is made.

I haven't bought an SOE game since they did their bait and switch with SWG roughly a decade ago. The security breaches, the false promises, the shoddy games, the debacles like this one: all of it has shown me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I made the right decision. Why people would willingly choose to give money and legitimacy to SOE and men like Smedley and then have the gall to complain about it later is beyond me.

Here's a final thought: If you're currently giving SOE money by playing one of their games, or by using their ridiculously overpriced and underperforming PlayStation, then you have zero right to complain about this. SOE is ludicrously corrupt; you simply have to do your research about them to discover this. If you haven't, or if you choose to stick your head in the ground and pretend that they aren't so, then it's your own damned fault when things like this happen to you.

@Pasha

The most good part of your SWTOR subscription for the rest of us is that yours will expire in March too. Perhaps then you'll find yourself less compelled to try passing opinion off as fact. The Ilum daily quest is the ONLY daily that is bugged. The crafting is in the game, just not apparently to the level that you would like it (and if you're waiting for some game with SWG style crafting then you'll be waiting for a looooong time). The PvE is anything but boring to many, many people. The battlemaster commendations are random, but as for 'rare'...rng is rng. Fragmented world (really? What's a 'fragmented world'? You mean instances? That old chestnut again?) with loading screens? So a couple seconds of loading is somehow destroying things for you? Whew. Good thing no other game has loading screens in it, right?

@Everfaust

"Pointless" P2P model. Why bother trying to demonstrate anything to you about why subscription services are good? You've apparently already decided that paying to play a game is pointless and of no benefit compared to your precious free to play model. Subscription models have their benefits just as free models have theirs. If you weren't so blinded by your chosen side you could see that.

And yes, subscription products DO mean that there will be better content and more consistent content in some cases. You may not like it, but reality doesn't require you to like it for it to be true.

Finally, I know it's hard to believe (but yet again, reality doesn't require your belief) but not everything you read when you Google something is factual or true.

@trickfred

Here we go again with the GW2 rubbish. Tell me, what exactly is there to do in GW2 that you can't do in another MMO? Even in TOR? PvP? Alt? End game dungeons and raids?

Christ. You like GW2. Great. But don't start proclaiming that somehow at end game in GW2 there's this magic land of content and things to do that are somehow different from what's available to do at end game with every other MMO.

You raid or PvP or create an alt at end game in MMOs. That's what you do if you don't want to create your own content and entertainment (which clearly you're not interested in) by thinking out of the box.

@(Unverified)

Give it a rest. Every single MMO out there has, at its end game, the option to 'raid or pvp'. Some have a bit of crafting and some auction house playing, but that's it. If you want more content you find things to do yourself. To accuse TOR alone of having this issue at end game is beyond absurd.

GW2, WoW, AoC, WAR, AION, TERA, etc, etc. ALL of them have raids and end game dungeons that you do once you're finished (if you don't roll an alt to experience other parts of the story). If you're going to hack on one, hack on all.

@Buhallin

Oh, he'd care if it was his crap getting ripped off. But since it's somebody else's effort and work getting stolen he doesn't give a damn. The theft benefits him after all, so why should he care (his line of thinking).