SWG follow-up
2010-03-11
I pointed the last [real] post out to various folks I know from different places, which is why it actually got some comments. I did get one interesting response elsewhere, so I'll paraphrase that and share with you my response.
What he says is largely true. Some bits I don't quite agree with.
Obviously I don't have the figures but I suspect they did have fewer players after the CU went live, and all signs point to far fewer after the NGE (although it's still got quite a handful even now, which is interesting).
As for whether the CU might have been a good business move, I don't think it's that clear cut. Most games have a certain amount of churn and rather than the subscriber numbers for any given month representing a fixed number of people they'll be some proportion of the same people as last month plus a bunch of old returnees and a big chunk of newbies. That's especially true when you've got something big to draw people in, such as a big IP (and they didn't come much bigger than Star Wars).
If you've got a largely static population and less of a draw, such as when your game is old enough or specialist enough that most of the potential market have already seen it (e.g. EVE) then offending those people would be a very bad idea. Star Wars Galaxies was not niche, though - with that IP it could have been the most accessible MMO yet - and at less than two years old it certainly wasn't past it by MMO standards.
The danger of keeping things the same all the time is that new people won't stay, so the inevitable churn won't be replaced and eventually even the die-hards will get sick of it. In particular, the people crying 'nerf' are playing an optimal strategy and the chances are they're either bored that the game isn't challenging them or bored that it doesn't have meaningful choices for them (or both). Those people are quite likely to leave if you fix that, but but they'll only stay for so long if you [i]don't[/i] change something, so it's likely you've pretty much lost them already.
If your game is broken enough you either have to leave it as it is while the current happy users keep it afloat for as long as it goes, or fix it and risk losing them. (An alternative is to fork it, but that's got a bunch of risks of its own and the UO non-PvP server is the only example I know of anyone getting away with it). [It was pointed out to me that this wasn't really a fork: they ran it on the same codebase and although I don't know whether you could move between shards it's likely that this didn't split the community like separating them into different games with different update objectives could.]
When you look at it from that angle, possibly even the NGE wasn't such a bad idea. After all, SWG still runs today, on fewer servers than it used to but crucially more than Matrix Online, Asheron's Call 2, probably Age of Conan and definitely Warhammer Online. You can wonder whether letting the CU mature might have got them more, or even leaving the game closer to its original state; we'll never know.
The main mistake that SOE made throughout, and the thing primarily responsible for the ill will in my opinion, was the lack of openness and communication. Everything they did looked rushed, and tended to go to public test servers broken without any apparent intention to fix the bugs that were being reported. Players felt like SOE didn't listen. The NGE went live within a day of being announced, having been kept secret until then. Keeping secrets is a sign of distrust: if you feel you have to do something players aren't going to like, get the idea out there, let them get used to it and persuade them it's for the best.
None of this is a defence for releasing broken games: in fact the evident difficulty of fixing them should be a clear indication that it's cheaper to put more money and time in to get them right in the first place :)
Again, many thanks for the quoted post. I won't name people here but you're welcome to drop by and take credit.
"I never played SWG. I remember suggesting you play WoW because it was a lot less broken. The CU seemed less of an 'upgrade' and more a 'nerf' to players I talked to. So after the CU did they have more or fewer players? And then after the NGE?
In both cases I think it's fewer, and the game producers have generated a lot of ill will.
So was changing the product a good idea? Fewer players = less money, so 'no'
Better not to launch flawed or broken games in the first place.
What he says is largely true. Some bits I don't quite agree with.
Obviously I don't have the figures but I suspect they did have fewer players after the CU went live, and all signs point to far fewer after the NGE (although it's still got quite a handful even now, which is interesting).
As for whether the CU might have been a good business move, I don't think it's that clear cut. Most games have a certain amount of churn and rather than the subscriber numbers for any given month representing a fixed number of people they'll be some proportion of the same people as last month plus a bunch of old returnees and a big chunk of newbies. That's especially true when you've got something big to draw people in, such as a big IP (and they didn't come much bigger than Star Wars).
If you've got a largely static population and less of a draw, such as when your game is old enough or specialist enough that most of the potential market have already seen it (e.g. EVE) then offending those people would be a very bad idea. Star Wars Galaxies was not niche, though - with that IP it could have been the most accessible MMO yet - and at less than two years old it certainly wasn't past it by MMO standards.
The danger of keeping things the same all the time is that new people won't stay, so the inevitable churn won't be replaced and eventually even the die-hards will get sick of it. In particular, the people crying 'nerf' are playing an optimal strategy and the chances are they're either bored that the game isn't challenging them or bored that it doesn't have meaningful choices for them (or both). Those people are quite likely to leave if you fix that, but but they'll only stay for so long if you [i]don't[/i] change something, so it's likely you've pretty much lost them already.
If your game is broken enough you either have to leave it as it is while the current happy users keep it afloat for as long as it goes, or fix it and risk losing them. (An alternative is to fork it, but that's got a bunch of risks of its own and the UO non-PvP server is the only example I know of anyone getting away with it). [It was pointed out to me that this wasn't really a fork: they ran it on the same codebase and although I don't know whether you could move between shards it's likely that this didn't split the community like separating them into different games with different update objectives could.]
When you look at it from that angle, possibly even the NGE wasn't such a bad idea. After all, SWG still runs today, on fewer servers than it used to but crucially more than Matrix Online, Asheron's Call 2, probably Age of Conan and definitely Warhammer Online. You can wonder whether letting the CU mature might have got them more, or even leaving the game closer to its original state; we'll never know.
The main mistake that SOE made throughout, and the thing primarily responsible for the ill will in my opinion, was the lack of openness and communication. Everything they did looked rushed, and tended to go to public test servers broken without any apparent intention to fix the bugs that were being reported. Players felt like SOE didn't listen. The NGE went live within a day of being announced, having been kept secret until then. Keeping secrets is a sign of distrust: if you feel you have to do something players aren't going to like, get the idea out there, let them get used to it and persuade them it's for the best.
None of this is a defence for releasing broken games: in fact the evident difficulty of fixing them should be a clear indication that it's cheaper to put more money and time in to get them right in the first place :)
Again, many thanks for the quoted post. I won't name people here but you're welcome to drop by and take credit.
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