February 05, 2007

*whew*

That was a LONG weekend.  I had a great time in San Diego hanging out with SOE team and other members of the online gaming community.  Unfortunately, now I'm back to the real world. 🙁

Now I want to give you all an overview of what I did over the weekend.

Thursday -- I left southwest Florida not knowing what to expect.  I had no idea why they decided to pick me to go to an "Influencer's Summit".  I don't consider myself to be very influential.  Also, I don't like taking time off work, especially when I don't get to spend that time with my family.  But I had decided to go anyway because I got to represent a portion of the SWG community.  I was on a mission.  I wanted to make them regret inviting me and to make them feel the pain that we all have felt for so long.

I arrived around 2-3 PM.  Around six o'clock I made my way down to the hotel lobby to find other people that were at the summit.  I met a group of EQ & EQ 2 players and we all got acquainted.  Shortly thereafter, we made our way up to the bar on the fourth floor.  About three or four beers later, we started seeing people with SOE shirts infiltrating our group.  Eventually I saw a face I recognized.  It was our community manager Kurt "Thunderheart" Stangl.  Immediately I jumped at the opportunity to talk to him about the game and how the community feels about what has transpired over the past year and a half.

It was a welcome surprise to me that he not only didn't run away, but really listened to me and seemed to agree with most of the stuff I was saying.  I have read nearly EVERYTHING TH has ever written on the forums since before he worked for SOE.  He really IS one of us and has the community's best interest at heart.  Just an interesting fact... he starts almost every sentence with the word "So"

Around 8 PM we went to meet the rest of the SOE team at the official mixer.  I met Brenlo, Virrago, Pex, Loche, Nadias and many others.  They all were interested in talking with me and didn't back down from any questions that I asked.  There were very few that they couldn't answer.

After the mixer, two of my guild members that I have known for two and a half years (but never really met in person) drove down from Los Angeles and met me for dinner.

Friday -- We had breakfast with the SOE team and again I was impressed by the open discussions about the game that we were able to have.  Then we went into the conference room and had some discussions about SOE in general.  Most of it was not specific to SWG, so I won't go into any detail here.  We were instructed by Brenlo that the NGE was not a topic that we should bring up during these discussions, but we were allowed to discuss outside of the organized discussions.

Sometime during the day (I believe after lunch) a group of the SWG players was congregating around a guy that looked like the President of SOE, John Smedley (Smed).  I had asked if he was going to be there and was told they didn't think he was going to be there (not that I really expected him to be... he's the President of a huge company).  So I asked Pex who it was and he verified that it was, in fact, Smed.

After the afternoon session, two other SWG players and I were able to talk to Smed for over an hour about the state of the game.  This was probably the highlight of my trip.  Don't get me wrong, everything else was pretty cool, but this is the President of SOE, just sitting there like a regular guy answering our questions and talking VERY frankly with us.  He didn't act superior to us or treat us like we were unworthy of his time.  He's a really down to earth, stand up guy.  I learned alot about the realtionship between SOE/LA and he was able to tell us things that the rest of the SOE team could not.

I didn't hold back and probably asked some loaded questions (okay, I know I did) but he answered them tactfully and honestly.  He admitted that the implementation of the NGE was poorly done, but that it was "out of their hands".  The other thing that impressed me is his "make it so" attitude.  He's hardcore, I'll tell you that.  Over dinner another player said something to someone else about a specific thing that was missing from the game.  Smed overheard it and right away told the COO of the company, Russell Shanks, (who BTW was sitting right down the table "Russ, did you know that they don't have this in SWG?"  Russ' reply was "That doesn't make any sense!?" and immediately, he started punching keys on his blackberry.

Smed was also able to tell us about some of the things that SOE has planned for the future of SWG like: a built in VoIP solution, out of game access to your in-game e-mail, an in-game web browser and many other incredible features.  I mentioned to him that the thing most players that I have spoken to want is content.  He seemed a bit surprised by this, but definately was receptive and gave me hope that there would be a lot more content in the near future. Oh, one more quick note about Smed, don't use the word "themepark" around him.  He detests that word.  I think we all should put our collective minds together to come up with a better name for these.

Saturday -- Yvvits and Mr. Bubble joined us.  If you don't know, they do an SWG-related podcast.  I've never heard it, but I have heard of them.  We went for a tour of SOE headquarters in San Diego and got to see several demos.  I was very impressed by their organization.

We saw a lot of interesting things, some of it is covered under the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) that I signed, but some of it like the new launchpad is not.  When they mentioned this on Friday, I was not impressed.  I thought to myself "so what, a new launchpad".  Let me tell you, when I saw the demo for this, I was blown away. It was AMAZING!  Some of the features include: being able to keep track of your friends even if they go on to other SOE games, being able to store your password so you can automatically log into the game by double-clicking on the icon on your desktop, downloading patches using the same background service that Microsoft uses to download patches for Windows, etc,.

Another thing I got to see was an actual CSR for SWG interacting with a player and helping him to solve an issue.  They took us into their Network Operation Center(NOC) which had a projector displaying current activity in all of the various games on all of the different servers.  It was amazing.

We also saw the various offices and cubicles of people that work there.  Pex has about 50 million books, manuals, guides and novels related to Star Wars.  He also has two copies of the board game Operation.  Later, he explained to us that he wished he had been on the tour with us so he could have shown those to us.  Evidently they are special editions that have been replaced with a picture of a Mon Calamarian.

After the tour, we briefly went back to the hotel then boarded the bus again to go on a yacht that they had chartered for the evening.  It was very nice.  We again engaged in discussions about the game and most of the ideas that we have had, they have had as well.  I want you all to know that the entire SWG team that I spoke with are all hardcore SWG fans and really want the same kind of things for the game that we do.

Later, Loche, Pex, my two friends from L.A. and I went out to dinner and continued our discussions.  We all continued talking until around 2 AM when everyone was pretty much exhausted.

Summary:  I’m not sure when, but my mission changed sometime throughout the weekend.  Most likely this was when I finally decided that SOE is not the problem with SWG.  I am not trying to convince you that they all walk on water and that everything that they touch turns to gold.  But they are bound by licensing and contracts and don’t have the final say as to what goes into this game.

My new goal is to continue to work with them to help them better understand what the playerbase wants for SWG.  Star Wars is the biggest franchise ever.  SWG has the potential to be the biggest MMO ever.  I believe that the reason that it has never met this potential is that there have been too many dramatic changes to the system and that there has been a breakdown in communication between the playerbase and those that make the final decisions.

It was definitely a wake-up call when after the NGE many of the subscribers “voted with their feet” and cancelled their subscriptions.  Hopefully this resonates to the appropriate people and they will listen to the subscribers from this point forward.

I want to once again thank SOE for this eye opening chance to see what they are all about and for taking the time to listen to me as a player.

-Mel