SWG Tales

See something hilarious about smedley and crew? lets see it.

A couple of my favorites are (generalized, not actual quotes)

"You can add a quest for John Smedley's head"

"NGE is the worst thing since HIV" (out of context, yet funny)

I have to admit that there have been some pretty funny quotes in that "Open Letter to the SWG Community" thread. There was one that I read last night that was something to the effect of:

"It's like you've been having sex with your wife for years and you keep getting the wrong hole, but no matter how many times she tells you why she doesn't want to have sex, you don't understand what she's telling you because you don't know that there's two holes down there. So now you've figured it out and are trying to get her to sleep with you again, but her butt's so sore at this point she want's nothing to do with sex anymore."

I liked mine from the great xp nerf we had during the CU.

"The more you tighten your grip; the more accounts that will slip through your fingers." --The Lunatic Fringer

I guess I made one guy spew coffee through his nose... emailed me about it.

Here's the article in full if you don't want to hit the main forums:

"INSIDE INFO ON THE FALLOUT OF THE NGE ON SOE

I don't expect you to take my word on this but I will share with you what I was told by a friend of mine who works for SOE. I can't give you any more detail like his position, department, etc for fear of him being identified. They apparently are bound by some air-tight non-disclosure agreements.

Below is what I was told:

Apparently, the NGE has really, REALLY stirred things up in Austin. All sorts of fingers are being pointed among SOE employee's as nobody wants to take the blame. Right now EVERYONE is trying to distance themselves from being responsible for making ANY decsions on pushing the NGE live. Every single employee is avoiding any connection to the NGE like the plague. I was told that the Dev's expected SOME account cancelations when the NGE went live, but my insider said they were willing to take those vet losses with the hopes of bringing in new subscribers over the holiday sales season. Also, the devs were counting on most of the threats by vets to quit to not actually go thru with cancelling. They have admitted, at least internally, that they number of cancels has FAR FAR FAR exceeded the number they were willing to take. As a result, there is beginning to be some serious discussion of a pre-NGE rollback. Several dev's are in serious jeopardy of being fired, and many many many of the support staff etc are polishing up their resume's because SOE has become the laughing stock of the online gaming community. No longer is it a badge of pride to work for SOE according to what I was told. Even my friend says he is no longer proud of working for SOE because of how they have destroyed their reputation.

Also, after having to report to LA on the NGE results, specifically the account cancels numbers, some of the big dogs from LA have flown into Austin for some serious intervention. No details on what that means yet, but it is known that Smedly and the senior crew at SOE have been behind closed doors for unusually lengthy meetings and have emerged with scowls on their face. The speculation is that LA is gearing up to crack down big time. (I would love to have been a fly on the wall in those meetings)

Because of the signifacant loss of subscriptions, customer service has laid off 25% of their support staff starting the 1st of January with more cuts expected.

All in all, the NGE turned out to rock the player base more deeply than what they expected. Talks are now underway on cutting the game off sometime in the first quarter of 2006. There is discussion with an outside company that is interested in purchasing the pre-NGE code with the aim of running a handful (5 tops) of pre-NGE servers, and maintained with a skeleton support staff. Right now this is apparently looking to be the most realistic result.

Oh, and my insider said the Devs are being intentionally vague on their forum posting and player communication because they want to keep as many subscribers as possible right now. A memo was passed down to ALL Dev's by the SOE execs with a list of topics that are completely not to be discussed or responded to on the forums. It is generally feared by the SOE team that the more info the player base has, the more of them will quit the game.

Also, the game WAS in the pre-development phase on porting to consol (xbox, playstation), but that those cycles have been 100% stalled at the moment because the future of SWG is so uncertain. But I was told that if any Dev posted or said that consol talks were never taking place it is a lie because significant discussions had already been underway with the design teams experienced with porting PC games to consol systems and that the NGE was partly (not entirely) designed to acomplish this objective."

more friend of a friend stuff... I hope this really is the case, at least this one has some light at the end of the tunnel (existance of pre NGE servers...)

That has been all over the forums today and it's total crap.

Lucasarts *IS* the reason we have the NGE.
It came at their insistence.

Here's a better one that's getting less coverage on the forums but is more in-line with things I know from more reliable sources:

i went to G.A.M.E. conference this weekend to promote my upcoming game and got a chance to apeak to SOE & LA folks who were promoting the SWG starter kit, one lady was a PR person and the dudes were DEV, im not gonna say names, because these folks were all pretty sympathetic on how badly VETS were screwed over by the NGE, and i knew they were completely powerless...

1 - NGE was completely a Lucas Arts call (i think we knew this already but it was good to have it be confirmed)
2 - SOE lobbyed to hold the release of the NGE till after feb. 06 but LA forced SOE to get the game in stores before "Black Friday" same SOE rep told me that SWG current subcription base is around 170k
3 - LA devs say that for vets the only silver lining is to put your character away for 6 months, thats when they think they will fix and implement all their changes.
4 - LA knew that NGE would anger the vets, but they did it in a concious effort to make the game more like, "WOW" (this came from a senior dev)
5 - When I insulted their character Jump skill saying it looked like Mary Poppins it stung them they said it would become something "real" soon. (yeah Right)
6 - the biggest changes that are coming are GCW stuff - thats what the boring ass LA producer kept talking to me about, sounds ok, but when everything else is **edit**ed who cares!
7 - THIS COMES FROM THE MOST SENIOR PERSON THERE, THERE WILL NEVER BE A ROLL BACK SERVER!

whatever this is what i gathered out of the 30 minutes i spent with the SOE LA peeps

Is it true?
I dunno.
What I do know is that LA was behind the NGE, the ability to jump over some things is coming, there are big GCW changes on the way, and there will NOT be a rollback.

Rankyn wrote:That has been all over the forums today and it's total crap.

Lucasarts *IS* the reason we have the NGE.
It came at their insistence.

Here's a better one that's getting less coverage on the forums but is more in-line with things I know from more reliable sources:

i went to G.A.M.E. conference this weekend to promote my upcoming game and got a chance to apeak to SOE & LA folks who were promoting the SWG starter kit, one lady was a PR person and the dudes were DEV, im not gonna say names, because these folks were all pretty sympathetic on how badly VETS were screwed over by the NGE, and i knew they were completely powerless...

1 - NGE was completely a Lucas Arts call (i think we knew this already but it was good to have it be confirmed)
2 - SOE lobbyed to hold the release of the NGE till after feb. 06 but LA forced SOE to get the game in stores before "Black Friday" same SOE rep told me that SWG current subcription base is around 170k
3 - LA devs say that for vets the only silver lining is to put your character away for 6 months, thats when they think they will fix and implement all their changes.
4 - LA knew that NGE would anger the vets, but they did it in a concious effort to make the game more like, "WOW" (this came from a senior dev)
5 - When I insulted their character Jump skill saying it looked like Mary Poppins it stung them they said it would become something "real" soon. (yeah Right)
6 - the biggest changes that are coming are GCW stuff - thats what the boring ass LA producer kept talking to me about, sounds ok, but when everything else is **edit**ed who cares!
7 - THIS COMES FROM THE MOST SENIOR PERSON THERE, THERE WILL NEVER BE A ROLL BACK SERVER!

whatever this is what i gathered out of the 30 minutes i spent with the SOE LA peeps

Is it true?
I dunno.
What I do know is that LA was behind the NGE, the ability to jump over some things is coming, there are big GCW changes on the way, and there will NOT be a rollback.

Thral, the person that wrote this, is a friend from DF. He most definately works in the game industry and I take what he says as fact.

It is my understanding that March 31st the game will likely be shut down by SOE. I have doubts that the code will ever be sold as there is millions worth of IP sitting inside of it.

Jabe

I don't remember where I read it, but it compared the NGE with New Coke

we all knew how that turned out, except this time we aren't going back to Classic Coke


http://www2.coca-cola.com/ourcompany/im ... ewcoke.jpg

Really there's not even rock solid proof that LA actually forced implementation of the NGE, or WHO at LA wanted it. Of course you have to take into consideration that LA may have said one thing, and the DEV produced another with NGE. Pushing it out too fast may be a result of the BLACK FRIDAY (day after thanksgiving) push. I totally believe that, because I remember seeing it at "the Wal-marts"

They have really gerfudged the game. If our only hope is to go into stasis for 6 months, I really hope the no-rent thing holds on for a while. Otherwise I have a lot of stuff that would start burning REAL FAST. If anyone sees that they are going to repeal that I would like a heads up so I can start saving my premo items...

toront wrote:

Rankyn wrote:That has been all over the forums today and it's total crap.

Lucasarts *IS* the reason we have the NGE.
It came at their insistence.

Here's a better one that's getting less coverage on the forums but is more in-line with things I know from more reliable sources:

i went to G.A.M.E. conference this weekend to promote my upcoming game and got a chance to apeak to SOE & LA folks who were promoting the SWG starter kit, one lady was a PR person and the dudes were DEV, im not gonna say names, because these folks were all pretty sympathetic on how badly VETS were screwed over by the NGE, and i knew they were completely powerless...

1 - NGE was completely a Lucas Arts call (i think we knew this already but it was good to have it be confirmed)
2 - SOE lobbyed to hold the release of the NGE till after feb. 06 but LA forced SOE to get the game in stores before "Black Friday" same SOE rep told me that SWG current subcription base is around 170k
3 - LA devs say that for vets the only silver lining is to put your character away for 6 months, thats when they think they will fix and implement all their changes.
4 - LA knew that NGE would anger the vets, but they did it in a concious effort to make the game more like, "WOW" (this came from a senior dev)
5 - When I insulted their character Jump skill saying it looked like Mary Poppins it stung them they said it would become something "real" soon. (yeah Right)
6 - the biggest changes that are coming are GCW stuff - thats what the boring ass LA producer kept talking to me about, sounds ok, but when everything else is **edit**ed who cares!
7 - THIS COMES FROM THE MOST SENIOR PERSON THERE, THERE WILL NEVER BE A ROLL BACK SERVER!

whatever this is what i gathered out of the 30 minutes i spent with the SOE LA peeps

Is it true?
I dunno.
What I do know is that LA was behind the NGE, the ability to jump over some things is coming, there are big GCW changes on the way, and there will NOT be a rollback.

Thral, the person that wrote this, is a friend from DF. He most definately works in the game industry and I take what he says as fact.

Until I had comfirmation like this, I had to take it like any other post that claimed to have insider knowledge.

At least I know who to blame now. SOE has not done this with EQ2 from what I understand from Noval. Only with the franchise the LA holds a tight grip on and controls all aspects of.

warsloth wrote:Really there's not even rock solid proof that LA actually forced implementation of the NGE, or WHO at LA wanted it.

There's very little in SWG that gets done without express approval of LA. That's part of the reason why it takes so long to get anything major done.

"I would cut off a toe to get back what first drew me into MMO's. That was Star Wars Galaxies pre-CU."


reminds me of another favorite quote: "I can get you a toe by five o'clock.... With nail polish."

EQ2 isn't a bad product at all I find. You'll recognize the combat interface, the cooldown timers etc.
They too received a CU, after SWG. In fact I find it works better even than it ever did in SWG. Whether you prefer grouping or doing solo quests, there's a billion things to do and the loot/rewards are completely on par with the lvl you have, for near same level quests and mobs. You can not be bored there. I haven't managed to yet anyway. There's ALWAYS something to do.

There's plenty of roleplay guilds around, while they are harder to spot than in swg. Many roleplayers dont go out into the open but stay in private channels and do it text based. It can be fun but its not my style.
They are generally VERY newbie friendly as well. Im sure they exist but I haven't run into any unpleasant players yet.

The only negatives I can find is, your housing and furniture costs more than your gear the first 40 lvls. Its not easy to furnish a home.

The second and more annoying thing is the lack of variety in armor and robes. Everything is almost based on the same meshes, add a couple of new colours. Light, medium, heavy and cloth types.
If they started throwing in non-stat/lvl requirement clothing and made a few more options for house owners, the game would ROCK for roleplay.

I have a berserker there named Eterniss, if anyone else plays feel free to add me. Its a bit lonely there sometimes

*coughs* sorry for side tracking.

back to SOE and NGE gripes!

Im so bitter to have lost my precious SWG I'll refrain from commenting right now

got some new stuff from drudging around the boards...

http://videogames.yahoo.com/ongoingfeat ... 726&page=0

and this little story I found amusing:

Every player in the galaxy Liked Star Wars a lot...
But Smedley, Who lived outside the galaxy, Did NOT!

Smedly hated Star Wars! Every planetary region!
Now, please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason.
It could be his head wasn't screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.

But,
Whatever the reason, His heart or his shoes,
He stood in his office, hating these fools,
Staring down from his window with a sour icky frown
At a shiny new shuttle in a player created town.
"Theyre leveling jedi!" he snarled with a sneer,
"Tomorrow more will come! Theyre practically here!"

Then he growled, with his fingers nervously drumming,
"I MUST find some way to stop players from coming!"

For,Tomorrow, he knew...
...All the dancers and musicians Would wake bright and early.
They'd rush for their cantinas! And then! Oh, the noise!
Oh, the Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!
That's one thing he hated!
The NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!
Then the players, young and old, would gather in town.
And plan an adventure. It had to go down!

They would plot a base take down or to hunt some rare beast
Which was something Smedly couldn't stand in the least!
And THEN They'd do something He liked least of all!
Every player on the server, the tall and the small,
would get in there vehicles or they might just run.
Then those veteran players would start to have fun!

They'd craft! And they'd grind!
And they'd GRIND! GRIND! GRIND! GRIND!
The more Smedly thought of the players the DVD might bring,,
The more the Smedly thought, "I must stop this whole thing!"
"Why, for two and a half years I've put up with it now!"
"I MUST stop these players from coming!
...But HOW?"

Then he got an idea! An awful idea!
SMEDLY GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL IDEA!

"I know just what to do!" He laughed in his throat.
I will kill this game and not be the goat!
And he chuckled, and clucked, "What a great trick!"
"Ill kill this game off, and Ill kill it quick!"

"All I need is a producer..." Then Smedly looked around.
But, since producers are scarce, there was none to be found.
Did that stop the old Smedly...? No! Smedly simply said,
"If I can't find a producer, I'll make one instead!"

Talent under Smedly was as bare as his cupboards,
Because people in his watch tend to fail upwards!
THEN He saw an ex-tester and shouted with Glee
His name was Julio Torres. Ill call him JT
I'll make him a puppet,.... and pull all the strings
I'll make him do all sorts of horrible things

"This is thing number one," old Smedly hissed
And he slapped at his desktop, banging his fist.
Weve hit them with nerf-bats till our fingers are blue.
We cant use the nerf bat, the nerf bat wont do
As his plan was unfolding his hands were wringing
and his tiny cold heart was desperately pinging

Smedly began to pontificate I know what to do,
We wreck the whole world and claim that it's fast and fun too!
We kill every profession, burn them all to the ground.
Replace them with one, not a real difference to be found
Then change a few things and call them iconic
Even a five year old boy will find them moronic

Well remove the targeting system, thatll empty the house
Make them awkwardly chase things with there keyboard and mouse
Oh crafters, and dancers, and musicians too
Lets leave them with absolutely nothing to do
Well laugh as they all cry boo-hoo-hoo
Now what server wont be terribly blue?

And Jedi, its Jedi I hate most of all
It is time they all take a terrible fall
We will make them useless, strip all of there power
Surely that will knock them from there ivory tower!

Then Smedly slithered and slunk, with a smile most unpleasant,
And worked a long time and made the NGE present!
He nerfed pets and loot and every last gun! And carefully made sure he removed all the fun!

All their windows were dark. Quiet snow filled the air.
All the players were all dreaming sweet dreams without care
When the NGE hit the first little house on the square.

When the players logged in they were told to respec.
Most players wondered Oh my gosh! What the heck?
Then they wandered and tried and finally found there house
But most goofily jumped and couldnt work there mouse.
When they got to there houses there stuff was useless or gone,
How could our fun have really hurt anyone?

The players quit and cancelled till all servers were bare.
Glancing at the financially reports lead Smedly to declare.
I have killed SWG, I truly have won
There is no way that anyone can find any fun!

But, Smedly had been caught by this e-zine reporter
Who'd come to his office to see what was the matter.
She stared at Smedly and said, "Smedly, why,
"Why are you taking our game away? WHY?"


But, you know, old Smedly was so smart and so slick
He thought up a lie, and he thought it up quick!
"You are quite right dear, the forums are flaming,
"Thats the vocal minority, there always complaining."
"Players love the NGE, our subscriptions are high."
"The cries of the whinners simply wont fly."

And his fib fooled the reporter. Then he patted her shoulder
And he got her a drink and claimed the trouble was over.
And when the reporter left his office with her cup,
He took the financial reports and tore them all up.

But into his office the Chairman of the board came
He looked at Smedly and declared What a shame
Last year we grossed sixty million dollars from this game

We need to balance the budget and fire someone
We have tried the NGE and it really isnt much fun
Please clean out your desk. Get out pal, your done!

Someone has way too much time on their hands...although I thought it was good. I got some good laughs out of it.