Naoki Yoshida recent interview

[Delily]

Actually, the belief that WoW killed off SWG isn't accurate. In fact one of the lead developers of that game refuted that in his blog. He said the numbers started dropping with the addition of holocrons.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Actually, the belief that WoW killed off SWG isn't accurate. In fact one of the lead developers of that game refuted that in his blog. He said the numbers started dropping with the addition of holocrons.

It lost half its player-base when CU was released, making the game a World of Warcraft game as well.

When I said Yoshida was clueless, I did not mean that he was clueless in terms of being a developer. I meant he was clueless as to the true state of the genre because its literally been stagnant for more than half a decade. The only thing certain from the current state of affairs is that making MMORPGs like giant lobby games doesn't work. That's a far cry from saying MMORPGs are in decline or dying. Definitely the lobby based ones are in decline, but its impossible to say that of all MMORPGs in general because no AAA developer has honestly attempted to dust off and refine mechanics from things like Star Wars Galaxies or EVE online for over a decade. And a little history lesson: Those didn't die off because of lack of popularity. They died off because World of Warcraft blinded every AAA publisher with dollar signs, so they were relegated to the dust bins of history before their time had truly passed.

Unfortunately, we're in a state of emergency because if someone doesn't try to polish those old mechanics soon, everyone who originally worked on those games will be in retirement or dead.

Yes, I really don't think he was around for the older MMOs like SWG. He just has no experience with them, which many developers these days do not. Which is why you are correct.

However, Yoshida IS correct in saying that the current genre, what people percieve as an MMO is dying. However, that is because I don't think he knows about the older ones. He thinks its been polished to death, when it has not.

[Delily]

It lost half its player-base when CU was released, making the game a World of Warcraft game as well.

No, this is wrong. Here's a link to Raph Koster's blog. Some direct quotes from it:

"WoW didn’t kill SWG. In fact, SWG lost less users to WoW than any other SOE game. (This makes sense — it was the least like WoW, after all). It did lose some of its conversion rate — probably something we can credit to WoW’s buttery smooth experience."

http://www.raphkoster.com/2015/04/27...galaxies-fail/

There's another link out there some where were another developer basically said that until they released holocrons, they had steady growth rate. Once they released holocrons, people started leaving.

Yes, I really don't think he was around for the older MMOs like SWG. He just has no experience with them, which many developers these days do not. Which is why you are correct.

However, Yoshida IS correct in saying that the current genre, what people percieve as an MMO is dying. However, that is because I don't think he knows about the older ones. He thinks its been polished to death, when it has not.

Nope. According to Wikipedia, "Yoshida drew some inspiration from his long-lasting enthusiasm for MMORPGs, having played such titles as Ultima Online, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Rift, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Guild Wars 2."

Sauce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naoki_Yoshida

We can sit here and debate this all day long, but Yoshida is the producer for FFXIV for a reason.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

Did you actually play the game? Yes, players did start dropping off when Holocrons came out very slowly, however when CU was released HALF the playerbase up and left.

Also.. Ultima Online, Everquest, DAOC, WOW, WHO, SW:TOR are all very themepark related games. None of them are even close to what SWG:Pre-CU was.

SWG lacked content but its strength was all the content it has is extremely replayable. The Holocrons were not much content. However instead of adding more content and things to do. THEY changed the entire game.

It's your word versus people who were intimately involved in the product, but no, I never played it, I can only relay what people say. However, the bold part is important, because that is the number 1 sign an MMO is in death throes. The reason Yoshida pulled it off is that he shut down the game and basically launched a completely new one. He didn't change it in flight.

That was not directly what they stated. You took something out of context in an argument. They simply started it started losing playerbase when holocrons came out. It was a long time, almost a year and a half with little to no content being added to the game. OF COURSE THEY WOULD START LOSING PLAYERS!

Then, instead of content being added to the game they learn that they are taking everyones hard work and making it WORTHLESS. When CU came out:

EVERY ITEM IN THE GAME BECAME WORTHLESS, they redid the game. They pretty much removed it from the game.

Imagine grinding for months for Dreadwyrm gear, being the best in the game and the next day they change the game into a facebook game and Dreadwyrm armor is not only given away, but worthless.

Now imagine some of those pieces of gear, not only being worthless but ALSO deleted, removed from the game because its a new game.

[Delily]

Did you actually play the game? Yes, players did start dropping off when Holocrons came out very slowly, however when CU was released HALF the playerbase up and left.

Also.. Ultima Online, Everquest, DAOC, WOW, WHO, SW:TOR are all very themepark related games. None of them are even close to what SWG:Pre-CU was.

SWG lacked content but its strength was all the content it has is extremely replayable. The Holocrons were not much content. However instead of adding more content and things to do. THEY changed the entire game.

It's your word versus people who were intimately involved in the product, but no, I never played it, I can only relay what people say. However, the bold part is important, because that is the number 1 sign an MMO is in death throes. The reason Yoshida pulled it off is that he shut down the game and basically launched a completely new one. He didn't change it in flight.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

It's your word versus people who were intimately involved in the product, but no, I never played it, I can only relay what people say. However, the bold part is important, because that is the number 1 sign an MMO is in death throes. The reason Yoshida pulled it off is that he shut down the game and basically launched a completely new one. He didn't change it in flight.

What happened in a nutshell in a good example, was they took FFXIV: A Realm Reborn and revamped it to what it used to be instead of the other way around. Then made all items worthless and reset levels. Legendary and really cool weapons people had, spent years to get were invalidated completely. They went from 800k-1.1million subs to 400-500k in a day after that update which was REALLY good back then. It also didn't help that World of Warcraft was also starting to become popular, so they all left and moved to a better game.

Yes, it did start to drop off when they added Jedi in patch 6.2(I think?)-9.0, however that is because the game itself lacked end game content. It also wasn't getting any because instead of adding new content to the game they decided to CHANGE the game completely.

What made Starwars Galaxies such a good game was its re-playability, sandboxness. The updates and every update they added to the game made it worse and worse, removing sandbox features from the game.

Imagine if they fired Yoshida and brought back the old devs and turned it back into what FFXIV used to be. That is essentially what happened to SWG.

[Delily]

Imagine if they fired Yoshida and brought back the old devs and turned it back into what FFXIV used to be. That is essentially what happened to SWG.

That analogy is helpful, thank you for the explanation. One thing I notice is the focus on the sandbox elements. I know many people tend to think a sandbox MMO will revitalize the genre, but there have been quite a few attempts at a sandbox MMO, and only Eve is around. I think sandbox work very well for single player games like the ES series, and for smaller network games like Minecraft, but once you scale them up to MMO levels, the things that make then enticing in small environments become detriments, many because you have too many people fighting over sand and knocking over other people's castles.

[SQBoard]

They went from 800k-1.1million subs to 400-500k in a day after that update which was REALLY good back then.

Those are curious numbers...don't suppose you can link me.

The closest i can find is SWG peaked a little over 400k subs and settled to 200k range and kept losing even before WoW or CU/NGE.

Everquest was referenced to be around 500k at the time which was a success. As far as i could tell, million subs was unheard of until WoW when the expectation of mmo success was reset.