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Star Wars Prequels Media Movies Role Playing (Games)

Interview with SWG Producer Grant McDaniel 40

Posted by timothy from the he-knows-where-virtual-leia-lives dept.
Robert Cox from SWG.WarCry.com interviews SOE producer Grant McDaniel on the three-year anniversary of Star Wars Galaxies. From the article:
"'There was certainly a concern over how [the NGE] was going to be pursued by the players, but we knew that to make the kind of game that us and LucasArts expected for a Star Wars online game, we needed to make the changes,' said McDaniel. 'And to actually be able to continue to support the game that we've got, we needed to make those type of changes, to make it something that we could really feel good about, that we could really make sure was a high-quality game that provided the action experience that you'd expect from a Star Wars game.'"
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Interview with SWG Producer Grant McDaniel More

Interview with SWG Producer Grant McDaniel

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  • You You You (Score:5, Insightful)

    by eldavojohn ( 898314 ) * <<eldavojohn> <at> <gmail.com>> on Thursday July 27, 2006 @12:13PM (#15791760) Journal
    "There was certainly a concern over how [the NGE] was going to be pursued by the players, but we knew that to make the kind of game that us and LucasArts expected for a Star Wars online game, we needed to make the changes," said McDaniel. "And to actually be able to continue to support the game that we've got, we needed to make those type of changes, to make it something that we could really feel good about, that we could really make sure was a high-quality game that provided the action experience that you'd expect from a Star Wars game."
    (Emphasis mine)

    You can try to say the NGE was for the fans. You can try to tell me that the fans wanted it and welcomed it. But I was a fan and I remember the day that the test servers got the combat upgrade patch. I remember people running through coronet screaming that the world was ending. I remember telling them to can it and that everything was going to be ok. I was wrong.

    So tell me, Mr. Cox & Mr. Smedley, when are you going to listen to the fans? What really brought about the CU because it wasn't complaints from the fans. Was it LucasArts twisting your arm? Was it because you had a crazy idea and it got out of control so you couldn't stop because you had already dumped too much money into it? Were you worried about the ROI on all that work? Was it because some corporate yes-man said, "There's more money this way!" and since you're just a producer looking for profit, you followed blindly? What really was it? And why the hell didn't you listen to your fans after/while you made the decision?

    Why do you turn a blind eye to everyone in favor of classic servers? Why don't you let people vote with server selection? I'm sick of softball questions pitched to SOE people who were in charge of destroying something I once loved. Have you ever admitted to making a mistake in your entire life?

    "I try to read the forums on a daily basis and I try and get out there and respond at least every week or two to let the people know, 'Yes, we are still actively listening,' " McDaniel said. "I strongly encourage my teams to get out there on the forums on a daily basis. A lot of the design team are out there actively responding or gathering feedback on some of the systems we're working on.
    If I may comment on those forums, you have to play the game to post on them. They are tightly moderated by non-SOE representatives. Never have I had so many posts locked/removed or trashed because the mods didn't approve. There is no room for vocal dissent in your community and that's why it will or has already fallen apart.

    • Re:You You You (Score:2, Informative)

      by GundamFan ( 848341 )
      I played through the NGE also.

      I quit, not because of the game changing (it was kinda fun if you gave it a chance) I quit because of all the bitching from my fellow players. In the end it became impossible to have a fun play session without having to deal with mass protests or hate-spam in the local channel (why these people didn't just quit I don't know).

      The other thing that got to me was the so called "Elder Jedi" who made it there "job" to abuse anyone who respeced into or started a new jedi because they

      • Re:You You You (Score:5, Informative)

        by XenoRyet ( 824514 ) on Thursday July 27, 2006 @01:05PM (#15792216)
        Do you know what it took to get one of these "Elder jedi"? I was with SWG from day one, and it was too much work for me, personaly to get a Jedi. However, my roomate did get one, and I saw what it took. It was on the order of 40 hours of gameplay a week, for over a year, constant profession leveling. I think he mastered 3/4 of the professions in the game, and that was just to unlock the slot. After that he had 6 months of Jedi training out at the village.

        In other words, it was enough work, and a big enough achivement, that I wouldn't begrudge them a little anger at the fact that all of a sudden everyone and their brother could just roll up a character that took them littleraly years to work up to. The vets in that game got a raw deal, and I think a little bit of bitching is not out of line.

        • This is the exact attitude I am talking about, (and yes I was about 90% to unlock when the NGE hit) just because they fell slighted doesn't mean they are justified in trying to spoil everyones fun. Really it is SOE and LA's fault... they created an alpha class and made it "hard" to acheve and imposible to balance. At this point I think Star Wars (in a marketable form) can't be an MMO because the simple truth is that everyone (or nearly) wants to be a Jedi, Star Wars is about Jedi and Jedi have abilities gr
          • At this point I think Star Wars (in a marketable form) can't be an MMO because the simple truth is that everyone (or nearly) wants to be a Jedi, Star Wars is about Jedi and Jedi have abilities greater that average people.

            I've heard it before, mostly from disgruntled devs, and I think it's a copout. Battlefront, Republic Commando, Bounty Hunter. Rogue Squadron. TIE Fighter. The X-Wing series.

            There's a lot of people that love Star Wars for the Jedi. There's also a lot of people that love it for the space b

        • Re:You You You (Score:2, Interesting)

          by lickalotapuss ( 959294 )
          You can thank the 'Elder Jedi' for starting the ball rolling on fucking up SWG. If these players, and there were thousands of them, had not spent their entire time hologrinding, then village grinding, in the obsessive pursuit of an alpha class that shouldn't have been in the game to begin with, they might have seen that their were other things to do in the game besides powerlevelling and then complaining that they'd run out of things to do.

          The economy was royally screwed, due to Jedi existing completely ou
          • You are exactly right in all of your points. Jedi are simply not a class that should have been in a game set in that era. And the Jedi grind did a lot to wreck the game, as you say. However, I think that we can say, even though they shouldn't have been there in the first place, they still got the shaft.

            The point is, with this game, there isn't anyone who didn't get the shaft.

      • The two games are totally different. That is the big upset. The problem for pre-nge fans is that they got no other game to go to. The post-nge fans do. Almost every other MMORPG is like it. Prebaked character classes, loot based economy, twitch to make up for lack of skill.

        That I think is where SWG failed, it never succeeded in making clear what market it was for. It would like a bunch of Counterstrike fans wandering into a Jagged Alliance session and sticking around until Jagged Alliance became a bad coun

        • SWG failed because they changed everything about the game. The jedi class had nothing to do with it. Only that the kind of people to get a kick out of being a leet class were not the type who should have been in SWG. The game called for more balanced players. If you want a score to show how good you are you need a system like WoW and EQ has.

          Yeah... those where the exact people who where playing it. To answer your question, I liked both versions of the game for diffrent reasons. I admit that I liked the pr

    • Why are we beating a dead horse. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Thursday July 27, 2006 @02:07PM (#15792891) Journal
      Why do people still care about SWG, a games that started bugged and to the outsiders at least seems to only get more buggy over the years.

      There is a game called Locomotion, a half-assed sequel to the game Transport Tycoon, by Chris Sawyer. It is not perfect. In some ways it is worse then its parent. It is a tycoon game allowing you to build a road, rail, sea and air transport network. The original had a dedicated, still does, following but after a couple of years the game for me was finished. The graphics too old, and the gameplay too restricted by the limited engine.

      Some of the gameplay limits (station size, train length, annoying breakdown) wear removed with patches but in the end TT and its fan made offspring are just too old.

      Locomotion has at least better graphics but I am again running into the fact that Chris Sawyer has a very different idea about games then I would like. His eternal obsession with things wearing down was easily patched (no dear Chris, in real life you do not have to replace a train every 3 years just to keep it running. Trains 100 years old still run reliably.)

      But the extremely limited signalling, morronic path-finding and restricted station layout are once again turning me off from the game. Not because I don't want to play anymore but because I can't play the game I want to play it.

      What does this have to do with SWG? Well not much except that TT and indeed Locomotion are by any outsiders as dead a horse as you can find. So why still flog it?

      Simple. BECAUSE THERE HAS BEEN NOTHING TO REPLACE IT

      SWG for all its faults still stands alone. Pre-CU and certainly Pre-NGE Star Wars Galaxies is a unique game, not just in gameplay terms but also because Sony is one of the few online companies who do not think everyone in the world owns a credit card.

      I swear to god that the next person who recommends Eve Online (Credit card only) to me, I will call him a NGE-developer. If you then point out that I could always buy a pre-paid card for Eve Online (only buyable from stores that only accept credit cards) or use paypal (dutch paypal only accepts credit cards) I am going to call them a SWG bug tester.

      One thing that made SWG standout was its proffesion system. You didn't have one. Rather most new players would take all the base proffesions available and dabble in each, gaining experience and spending their limited (fixed) amount of skillpoints on getting better in their proffesions. So a new player would have some markmanship (ranged), melee, scout (harvesting from animals), crafting (turning harvested stuff into goodies), medic (turning dead animals into goodies to cure ouchies), maybe even a bit of entertainer to rest your mind and look at your avatars thight ass in a skimpy dress. Oh was that just me?

      NGE changed this. It is now exactly like Everquest 1-2, WoW and indeed every goddamn Korean MMORPG. If I wanted to play any of them, I would. SWG was the one I stuck with longest.

      But so what? You in the end still had to choose a profession, sacrificing some lesser ones to free skillpoints so you could advance in others. Yes. Correct. BUT if you ever tired of your chosen proffesion you could easily learn a new one. Tired of melee, pick up some pistol skills.

      Ah but you can do that in other MMORPG's, just start a new character. But no. In SWG, you didn't have to do that. You would just slowly migrate from your old job, loosing skills and learn new ones. You would still have the same name, still be the same person.

      The impact of only being allowed one character per server should not be underestimated. Many a person learned the hardway that this means you can be tracked far more easily, be an asshole and get ignored and you are ignored until you delete your character and restart a new one.

      But the most important one for me was that you didn't have to do all the beginners stuff again. Your character respecced from swordsman to pistoleer did not have to get the Point of Interest badges again. In everquest 2 I go

      • Well, poach WoW did, but it also attracted an unholy amount of new players all with 14.99 in hand.

        Kinda-sorta. The asian market gives you much less per customer and keeps track of them in a different way. It's hard to compare with the metrics available to us. They're certainly not all paying 14.99 monthly.
  • If the interview does not mention new ingenious ways to kill Gungans, don't tell me about it.

  • Eight months into NGE (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kherr ( 602366 ) <kevin&puppethead,com> on Thursday July 27, 2006 @12:44PM (#15792027) Homepage
    It's been about eight months now since NGE was pushed live, and SWG is a shadow of its former self. Worse yet, they haven't delivered on any of the NGE promises (such as full collision detection) or restored the galactic civil war, but instead are trying to add WoW-style content (Battle of Restuss). It's all so forced and incomplete.

    Sure, some people like aspects of the new combat. But melee was ruined. Then they put in a fix for melee, and it screwed up other things. But the real destruction of SWG by NGE is the end of the player community. The NGE changes have eliminated any need to interact with people: no more wounds or fatigue that need healing by doctors or in cantinas, switching to a loot-drop economy and screwing over crafters. Want to find the most powerful weapons or best armor? It doesn't really matter anymore, it's all based on your combat level and not the gear itself.

    There are still many NGE-introduced bugs, eight months later. SWG always has had a reputation for bugs and being unfinished, but prior to NGE there was always a sense that new stuff was being added. NGE bugs are all because of resetting things, so stuff that used to work doesn't. It's like re-introducing problems that used to be gone. Very frustrating for players.

    The attempts to turn SWG into a persistent KOTOR or a WoW work-alike they've ruined the game. If you like fighting for an hour or so every night maybe SWG is worthwhile. Or you can just play an FPS that doesn't have a monthly subscription. The stats on mmogchart.com don't show an increase in subscribers, that's for sure.
    • I would in all honestly love a massive persistant KOTOR, and I hope that is what Bioware's MMPROG project is. But SWG should've stuck to its roots. It was hard, it was rewarding, and it was full of endless possibilities. They kicked it in the nuts. I like easy kids gamesque MMPROGs, which is why I play City of Heroes. I played both because I liked the complexity of SWG.

  • Except that.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Jtheletter ( 686279 ) on Thursday July 27, 2006 @12:46PM (#15792044)
    really make sure was a high-quality game that provided the action experience that you'd expect from a Star Wars game

    Except that that was exactly NOT what the large installed base expected. What they expected was tweaks to the system they were currently enjoying, not having the carpet yanked from under their feet. What is it about Sony that even after decades of failed proprietary formats and software gaffs they still think they know better than the user what the user wants?

  • Grant McDaniel a.k.a. Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So NOW we know where the Iraqi Information Minister went after the war.

  • Screwing the Dead Horse (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bonker ( 243350 ) on Thursday July 27, 2006 @12:59PM (#15792152)
    The real crime here is that Smed and Lucas are so busy screwing the dead horse they've created of the game experience that they're unwilling to realize that all the 'image upgrades' in the world won't magically add fun back into the game.

    SWG was a heap and a half when it shipped. It's less than half a heap now that all the depth has been artificially amputated.

    This is typical of SOE, but I really did expect better from Lucasarts.
    • I was going to say the same thing the other way around. Lucasarts has always been the forfront of messing up the fun for poeple playing their games. SOE on the other hand has a few great MMORPGs, i played Final Fantasy XI for over two years, all the updates they did were great. the down time was nill. being able to group with people to have a nice team effort wroked great. i loved it. but then a freind of mine (an avid Star Wars junkie) wanted me to play a medic toon on his server. so i joined up before
      • I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure FFXI has nothing to do with Sony :P
      • I played SWG, and I am playing FFXI right now. Personally, I find FFXI far too limited in many respects. The crafting system, housing, player cities, cantinas, and other social aspects are far more limited or non-existant I still play since a friend of mine across the country like the game. Essentially, FFXI feels like there is nothing to it but a grind fest in which you can't do anything solo.
        • that is pretty ture.. very hard to do a lot of things in FFXI with out having to have a party. the NGE in SWG through me off and i only knew one guy playing it. so i re-instated my City Of Heroes account so i could try out the newer City of Villians. those are both good/fun games to play with or with out a group.
  • Is there any point to posting more SWG stories? All that happens is that it gives everyone a chance to kick the SWG corpse around some more. For those of us who used to play, it just serves as a reminder as to why we left. "Why don't you just give me a nice paper-cut and pour lemon juice on it!"
  • I agree with the poster above. Why the fuck do the editors of Slashdot, Ars, and others keep publishing 'interviews' with the people responsible for SWG? I still play the game, only because my girlfriend and I are huge SW fans and have yet to find another mmo with the housing and social profession options that SWG has (hopefully they won't 'enhance' those as well). The only people left are those like us, the hardcores who have invested much time in their characters, or the curious newbs (who quickly leav

  • Other purchases (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IflyRC ( 956454 ) on Thursday July 27, 2006 @01:24PM (#15792401)
    My dislike with how SOE treated this game (I'm a former subscriber from Beta 2 forward until the NGE was announced) prompted me to reevaluate Sony as a whole. This year I decided to make a new camcorder purchase. Sony wasn't even an option. Proprietary memory sticks, SOE, Sony Music and root kits....NO WAY was I going to buy anything that Sony made and probably never will again.
    • It does seem that Sony (as in the megalithic corporation) is lacking more and more to be desired lately. Something seems to have happened within its culture that basically says "We don't give a flying fuck about the customer beyond the sale."

  • PC Gamer is funny. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by space_jake ( 687452 )
    Flipping through old issues cleaning up and I found something funny. About a year before its release, they had an article about upcoming MMO games. Their summary on SWG, "It'll take a boner of Jar Jar proportions to mess this one up."
  • Its an MMORPG that is challenging, has more more content than you could go through in an entire year, and after the updates coming in August it will have Chocobo Breeding and Racing. FFXI also has lots of content for players who reach level 75. Unlikw WoW which leaves level 75 players with little or nothing at all to do FFXI has lots of content for high level players, and when you make out your experience points you can still improve your character by earning merit points. The ability to add and upgrade
    • Well, of course there's not much for level 75 players to do in WoW, given that the current cap is level 60.

    • It also has the worst "return" policy I have ever encountered.
      "Return" policy in the sense of what happens to your account after you have left the game for x amount of time and you want to come back and re-activate your account.
      Warcraft and Everquest (I think) don't delete anything.

      The other month I thought I'd give FFXI another go, and maybe try out the Red Mage (actually, I was inspired after playing FF on PS2 hehe). Anyways, I got a rude shock when I found out that if I don't log in within 3 months

  • WoW is the problem (Score:2, Insightful)

    by stilleon ( 601857 )
    The problem here is that they are worried about what players want... not their players but what will garner them the buggest buck. Face it, they have one of the best licenses in the biz. They were doing good with about 200,000 subscribers. Then here comes World of Warcraft. Even though it is not a major license it does phenomenal, becoming the most played MMO ever (and still is), dwarfing all others. I know the board of directors of Sony must've been up in arms. "We payed for Star Wars, what went wrong." T
  • Sorry, I usually try to keep my posts very very clean and I'll probably be modded as a troll, but this is directly pointed at the SwG "managers"

    FUCK YOU FOR FUCKING EVERYTHING UP

    Never in my entire life have I seen something handled SO poorly in my life. There was ZERO change controls, they release something it breaks something, they nerf it and it breaks it again. Remember, you clowns basically completely IGNORED PAYING CUSTOMERS. Yes, I paid a bunch of money every month to play this game which in the be
  • Good job Binks!

  • Too many Jedi... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by foreverdisillusioned ( 763799 ) on Friday July 28, 2006 @07:02AM (#15797483) Journal
    You know, I think one of the best ways to solve the "everyone wants to play a Jedi" problem would be to release a 100% free version of SWG that allows you to play the Star Wars equivalent of Joe Sixpack. Allow the free players very basic access to everything, but you make it so that e.g. if they try to fire a laser pistol their accuracy is absolutely horrible. No skills (except perhaps some very basic crafting-type skills?), no XP, no way for the Joe Sixpack characters to level up or make a significant amount of money (except perhaps by offering quests? PC-generated quests would be interesting, but I'm not sure if it's doable.) However, if they really want to they can serve as mules or scouts--they just shouldn't expect to live very long if they do that. Come to think of it, this would be a great addition to any MMORPG (especially City of Heroes/Villains.) A little atmosphere; a little something to combat the feeling that the world is filled with nothing but heroes/villains/adventurers. Plus free advertising. I think it'd be more than worth the extra load placed on the servers, but I could be wrong...
  • What was it?... Something like "SWG is the game we would have loved to like"?

    The next steps in that forward progression will be along the path of war. McDaniel pointed out that a big part of Star Wars is the Galactic Civil War, in which the Rebels are struggling to overthrow the oppressive Empire. To that end, the SWG development team will be looking at ways to ramp up the conflict.
    Ok, where is this article about Déjà Vu?...

  • The next steps in that forward progression will be along the path of war. McDaniel pointed out that a big part of Star Wars is the Galactic Civil War, in which the Rebels are struggling to overthrow the oppressive Empire. To that end, the SWG development team will be looking at ways to ramp up the conflict.

    OK SOE, you listening? Good. here's the Pitch: Empire develops a MMORPG, sure it's buggy, but they get all the Rebel planets to subscribe and improve it. Just when everything is going good, change all

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