Mailbag: Star Wars Galaxies

We Can't Ignore The Continuous Spill Of E-mails From Galaxies Players

(CBS) 
This fact raises an ethical and possible legal question for me. How can a company intentionally deceive its customer base with the intent to mitigate financial losses, by continuing a product, making changes, and adding content, with the promises made of future content, all the while knowing that the product will be discontinued with in a year? Some would argue that the game was just changed not discontinued. However, I contend that a game is defined by not just its genre or subject matter, but by the type of combat system, content, and target audience. To me, Star Wars Galaxies was cancelled on the November 15th, and a new game took its place. Either way, the customers were never given the chance to know how the game was going to change in the future. Had I known a year in advance, of these changes, I would have walked away from it, and not invested my time and money. And SOE knew that many others would have done the same. We were never given that choice. Nor were others that paid for a 6 month or yearly subscription, and are now being denied a refund.

To compound this, the game that was released on the 15th, was not fit to put into a beta test yet alone go live. So not only was a game pushed upon us that few people wanted, and was done covertly to avoid mass cancellations, now we were asked to pay to play a half finished game, and to help find the flaws for them to fix!

To sum this point up again; Customers were deliberately deceived to minimize financial loss, so that SOE/LA could develop a game that few of the current player base wanted or liked, and then, when it was released live with so many coding errors that it was unplayable, the current customer base was asked to help “fix” it, while still paying the monthly fee! Please let that sink in, and reread it as many times as necessary so you can get a full scope of the ineptitude of the management staff that is running SWG. I won’t mention the ongoing customer service issues and the Trial of Obi Wan expansion debacle.

The truth of the matter in my opinion is this: SWG is a niche game. SWG will always be a niche game, no matter how you try to change it. The Star Wars Fan base is fragmented because of multi-generational aspects. In general, younger players choose to play one type of a game, faster action, more control, twitch based combat, while older players seem to enjoy immersion and complexity in a game. Had SOE and LA truly done a real market research, they would have found that a consensus could never be reached on the SWG game play and combat platform. There is no way to be positive on how the numbers would breakdown, and SOE and LA are gambling on the younger crowd, but with all the cancellations and negative feedback, it seems they made the wrong choice. When I look at the potential of the new SWG, I can see that it could be a fun 2nd game once it is fit to play, but not a replacement game for the original version. In addition, the game that SOE and LA are attempting to create already exists, it is called Star Wars: Battlefront 2 and is the most popular selling Star Wars game on the market today. If SOE and LA think they will be able to persuade players already playing that game, to subscribe to SWG and stay long-term, they are sorely mistaken. Battlefront 2 is very polished, and is had been specifically designed for a target audience.