Kevin Tierney offers his thoughts on how the direction of SWG aliented its core audience
There probably has been no MMORPG that has caused more controversy than Sony Online Entertainment’s (SOE) Star Wars Galaxies. It’s core game has been fundamentally altered twice, and debate has still been very intense, even six months after the latest revision, the “New Game Enhancements.” (NGE) While one can look for varying reasons as to why such changes were made, one is obvious: people, from LucasArts representatives Nancy Macintyre and Julio Torres, to numerous developers, all the way to the head of SOE John Smedley himself have argued that the changes were necessary to truly attract a crowd worthy of Star Wars. I believe this approach is flawed for numerous reasons.
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One problem the MMO market is that it is currently experiencing what I call “The WoW effect.” When World of Warcraft was released to stunning success, it redefined what a successful MMO was. Before this, 500,000 customers of an MMO was a very respectable number. Right before the first changes (i.e. Combat Upgrade) SWG reportedly floated at around 300-350,000, again quite respectable pre-WoW. The release of WoW caused SOE/LucasArts to radically alter the originally planned “rebalance” to an “upgrade” that not only incorporated many of Blizzard’s features, but also added a ton of bugs to boot. SWG was simply not compatible with a linear style WoW gameplay. Those who wanted WoW’s features were already playing WoW, without the bugs. While the CU had overall mixed results, one thing was clear, subscriptions were down.
As a result, SWG received yet another fundamental change to the game. This time it was almost unanimously agreed, the cure was worse than the disease. The problem, SOE/LucasArts reasoned, this time was not the combat system, but the fact that you “were Uncle Owen instead of Luke Skywalker”, that there was “too much reading” and that the game was not “Star Warsy” or “iconic” enough. As a result, the NGE was launched with almost no notice. The massive uproar over these massive changes persists today. Mr. Smedley has admitted that people have “voted with their feet” implying a large chunk of SWG customers have cancelled.
These results were entirely predictable, and it is amazing that SOE and LucasArts did not foresee this outcome. The problem is summed up nicely: Antagonizing your existing playerbase in the hopes of attracting a mythical “audience who doesn’t play, but will once we make these changes” almost never works. The “silent majority” never materializes, and your current base is alienated due to changes that they did not want.
The number one rule of any business deserving of customer patronage is to first and foremost, take care of your existing customers. Once they have been satisfied, then look out to attracting new customers. The majority of people who play MMORPGs do so with considerable commitment. They like advancing either through combat or other game mechanics. In order to do so, there needs to be stability. Why does anyone want to stay in a game that is constantly changing? Why pay for something when you have no clue if the product you receive three months down the line will be anywhere near the same as the product you have now? Minor changes to a constantly evolving game are to be expected, as balance is worked out, new content is added, etc. However, these things do not change the fundamental aspects of the gameplay for the customer like the changes SOE/LucasArts launched. In a world that requires consistent subscription fees to continue to have a viable game, the customer will not pay for games to advance their characters, only to see all that work eliminated constantly.
In making these changes, SOE and LucasArts also sorely misunderstands what generates true subscriptions for an MMO. While marketing campaigns no doubt contribute some assistance, true marketing comes from word of mouth. The veterans of a game are the ones who bring their friends and family to these games, and in turn they recruit more. Yet given the principle outlined in the previous paragraph, you need to retain veterans in order to get them to bring in new customers. The veterans are also those who help out the new players to achieve veteran status themselves. We gamers all have our stories of starting an MMO, being completely lost and clueless, until a veteran came along and provided their insight and wisdom on how to progress in the game. A marketing campaign cannot achieve this, no matter how slick. With substantially fewer veterans to help out new players, their chances of sticking around are reduced, and fewer subscriptions are retained.
When you are remodeling a house, do you look to expand when the foundation of your house is in shambles? Of course not. You secure that foundation, make sure it is stable and will continue to be stable, and then you expand your house. The analogy applies to Star Wars Galaxies. Make sure your current fanbase is happy, because if your grand plan to draw in subscriptions fails, it is up to those veterans to remain and keep the game alive. Since Sony/LucasArts discounted that principle, the writing is on the wall. The game went from being thriving game (pre WoW standards) before the combat upgrade, to a stable game, then to a game on life support with the NGE.
There is an instructive lesson in this, which I believe will be reflected upon by MMO companies long into the future. They will take seriously the importance of their already existing community, and should put their desires over that of a mythical “silent majority.”
die heeft er ook lang overgedaan om dat in te zien
😛
alhoewel beter laat dan nooit
Uhm wie is die: Kevin Tierney :huh:
gelijk heeft ie wel :p
Hier is een interessante reply vanaf mijn forum:
Interesting article, but that's not really a "why" and "how" but instead a simple report of the action/reaction scenario.
The real What Happened and Why People Left, is fairly simple, if a little more advanced in psychology.
Even in our games, people need an ambition, or shall we say, have needs wanting to be met. (besides immersion/escapism).
In particular there are four equal needs which ask to be met to achieve satisfaction:
Need for:
- Social Status
- Emotional connections
- Learning
- Defense
In the case of the NGE, all of these four pursuits were betrayed.
1. Social Status:
People worked on character customization and builds for as long as 2.5 years, and that was all rendered useless. They amassed wealth and items of worth, including but not limited to resources and weapons and armor - again, all these things were rendered useless. 2.5 years of work betrayed overnight.
2. Emotional Connections:
Once more, betrayal. As people felt betrayed for one reason or another, communities were torn asunder. The very real friendships which are apt to form wherever communication is possible *has* to be taken into account; by removing any significant or notable portion of these attachments causes a grieving process to begin. Once again, Betrayal. Also, humans also tend to form emotional connections to organizations or groups as though they are individual people--in this case, Sony/Lucas Arts/Star Wars the game itself. By implementing these changes without consulting the majority of the community, people's reaction to these changes were as though a friend had betrayed them.
3. Learning:
People *like* learning. What people do *not like* is working so hard to learn something that it becomes second nature, and then being told that all the effort put in and knowledge they've worked for is useless. You can offer them anything they want in stead, but it will make no difference: you've invalidated their work; once again, betrayal. Additionally, the changes were to "dumb down" the game. A lot of the loyal players were the ones who enjoyed learning that you could take a bit from BH, a bit from Marksman, a bit from ... whatever ... and come out with a character that can solo krayt dragons. Where is the learning process in the "9 iconic professions"? It's basic, at best.
4. Defense:
People require Solid Ground, stability, consistancy. In this they find comfort, gain confidence in their abilities to defend their communities, their assets, and themselves. They need to know that the limit of their comfort zone is not going to change, casting them into dangerous and unknown waters. Once again, betrayal, as SOE completely revamped the game's mechanics and abilites, as well as controls and interface, making that which was simple and commonplace awkward and difficult, and vice versa.
One step further on that one - with 2 sweeping changes in 6 months time, customers had no reason to believe there would be any chance at that inner sense of security and stability in the future.
As you can see, the real 'reason' SWG was such a failure, the reason people left, was because SoE simply betrayed their customers in every way it was possible to do so.
Even "prospective customers" who may have given the game a try would look at a company like this with trepidation - a history of betrayal is never forgotten, and SoE will never be forgotten for the NGE either.
wow geleerde gasten daar bij cotc
😉
maar weeral overschot van gelijk
😛
Weet je wat zo jammer is: er wordt veel geschreven cq gezegd jammer dat dat bijna nooit tot daden leidt 🙁
En dat is omdat SOE niet luisterd....
Betrayal.... hmm ....
is de nge nog starwarsier dan ik dacht 😉
ja das dan ook weer waar
😛
Abib wrote:
Betrayal.... hmm ....
is de nge nog starwarsier dan ik dacht 😉
probleem blijft alleen dat niemand die "iconic" en "star warsy" hoefde.
Mijn 2 chars waren voor mij gewoon uniek, en ze stonden voor mijn persoon IRL ook deels. Ik gedraagde me zoals ik buiten de game ook ben, met een beetje roleplay op zijn tijd natuurlijk. Ik had gewoon 2 "unieke" chars gemaakt, nu zien beide eruit als al die anderen.
Xcaret had een mooi jedi pakje, die ik samen met een tailor had gemaakt, en die later nog is uitgebreid werd met robe of the Storm Lord. Ik kwam echt niemand tegen die eruit zag als mij.
Xel-Ha was pikeman, ik gebruikte 1 van de beste pikes op dat moment (kaminoan great staff) die er erg cool uit zag maar ook gewoon een killer was. Als armor had ik + 350 health RIS armor. Aangezien er toen nog decay was (en ik 12 ADK had :P) liep ik dus rond in 1 van de duurste armor op de server rond.
Om lang verhaal kort te maken (want ik moet eten :P), iedere char was anders, en dat bracht in PvP ook veeeeeeeeeeeeeel leukere battles op 🙂