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One last thing I'd like to discuss in this explanation is the business end of things. Many of you question the logic of the decision to do this NGE.. stating that many of the existing players will quit because we're changing the game so much. From our standpoint we have to look at the game for the long haul. EverQuest is will be 7 years old on March 16th. We HAVE to think that long-term. With the game the way it was we knew we would never be able to attract enough people to really keep SWG viable as a business. It certainly would have kept some portion of our existing playerbase for a good long time, and we would have put out new expansions and new content as well as fixing bugs.. but it wouldn't have appealed to the really large Star Wars fanbase out there.. and frankly over time the existing userbase would have churned out as happens in any game like this. We just didn't have the game we needed to have if we're going to really grow this userbase. It might surprise you to know that after the first combat upgrade, we actually added new subs. We took a step in the right direction, but it just wasn't enough. So what we're doing here is obviously risky.. we're betting that we can make this game a whole lot more fun to our existing userbase AND make it appealing enough so that we can grow that userbase in a major way. Right now I think it's fair to say we have work to do on both ends. I hope you understand that we absolutely value each and every player. You pay the bills around here, and that's not something we are forgetting. None of us like seeing people cancel..If you think this change is about "acceptable losses for a bigger goal", that's simply not the case.. nor is it how we view things. We have a clear plan to make this game a whole lot more fun, for everyone.. and that's the gamble we're making.. that we can pull this off and get you, our players to help us make this the Star Wars game we all want.
Word of mouth is the thorn SOE had with their SWG business. In many ways it was embarrassing to admit that I was still playing SWG. And I quit much earlier than most. I had tried to recruit my cousins, and my schoolmates. Those that were into MMOs had already heard the abundant problems and were waiting for the game to get better with age. Problem is it got worse, and word of mouth continued to keep new players from joining. The # 1 thing that could have helped the SWG business was to release a quality finished product.
It came off the shelves very poor, such so that the press and magazines warned people to wait for improvements. The press said such is the benefit of MMOs because they get better with time. As the months passed key promises where placed on the back burner in order to blend the game into elements of the prequels. Ideas such as underwater cities were said to come after the space expansion because underwater movement was so similar to space movement. SOE could never get to these improvements because their classes were so underdeveloped they had to spend all their time redoing them. In time even the patient press threw in the towel.
The things we did as a PA were amazing. When I tell my family and Danyale tells her coworkers the things we did as a community, none of them can believe us. No one has ever heard of such community involvement and comradery. We were only one of the many great PAs SWG had long before release. SWG had a pre made fan base ready to do all the marketing they ever would need.
Word of mouth kept new players from joining the game. And no one is more responsible for that problem than the SOE and the developers. SWG had an army of players willing to recruit expand the player base. All SOE had to do was deliver a good product and treat its customers well. They did neither.
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