Darth Hater

I must respectfully disagree with "And in fact, we had a backlash of some anti-retention from the current customers that we already had because they were enjoying the game they were playing and wanted more of that, or wanted that fixed more than they wanted to fly around space in the Star Wars universe." As a frequent user of SWG at the time of JTL's release who spoke with many fellow players, I never encountered this sort of attitude described in the above-quoted passage. The only person I ever encountered who was upset with JTL was a big fan of the X-wing vs. TIE Fighter series who was turned off by the flight controls of JTL which he saw as over simplistic.

The above quoted assessment also fails to take into account that JTL was released one month prior to World of Warcraft's release. Many of my guildmates were already sucked into WoW's open and closed beta tests and didn't even bother to play SWG vanilla, let alone the new expansion.

Although I agree that content should not be changed radically as it was when the NGE was implemented, I observed that JTL was better received by the remaining SWG subscribers than was recounted here.

i REALLY hope this means that they're going to be including space flight/combat/travel FROM THE START (as opposed to not including it at all).

Flying around in space, exploring, dogfights, landing in & taking off from spaceports, collecting ships & test driving them all. Even flying to some missions which were on moons or other spaceships/spacestations. I enjoyed that all immensely in SWG.

I enjoyed grouping w/ people on the ground also, but imho the game would have gotten boring if it wasn't for space. JTL made the game much more immersive/intersting to me. It was the CU/NGE that killed the fun for me.

I also tend to think that the people who liked the space flight weren't heard from because they had nothing to complain about; as opposed to the more hardcore RPGers who tend to be more vocal & persistent. The squeaky wheel gets the grease i guess. Again though, i REALLY hope this just means space flight from the beginning as opposed to just eliminating it.

That's definitely true.

Numbers do have to be interpreted though.

As Walton was saying, they aren't able to read the minds of their customers. So more vocal customers may add more meaning to numbers whether accurate or not.

If 5 people leave a game, and only 1 says why; even if 4 ppl left for a completely different reason; all they have to work from is the one person who voiced their opinion.

I wouldn't be surprised if space and space combat would be implemented in the initial game. Now that he learned by having the ground game first and then ditch it to have space, it would be best to have both and improve it from whatever errors or flaws come by. Therefore, the game will be awesome all around without making any freak changes like WoW is doing. BioWare's intelligent minds from using quality games and management experience to enhance the game further and will provide a huge benefit to everyone from start to endgame without feeling left out.

From there, BioWare is spending a load of money and EA is loving every bit of BioWare's success. This game is going to be not only bigger than WoW, but will break a new generation of MMO gaming genre. See you in 2011.

<3 DH Team

-Macer

Wait a minute, you mean it wasn't JTL that saved SWG from being a total failure? JTL was the only part even half worth playing in my opinion.

I completely agree. JTL was a fantastic expansion and I can't remember meeting anyone in the game who thought differently.

That would be because the people who thought differently quit the game...

That's the entire point of this newspost...

I think at this time that subscription numbers were still increasing...

See, its not just about you and your small group of people you talk to. I am sure they have more concrete data, you know, being able to look at subscriptions, getting email from all customers and getting surveys. Just because 90% of the .01% of the population you talked liked JTL doesn't mean its a huge success.

I'm not insinuating that I've conducted an exhaustive survey - just that I was surprised by the remarks. No need to jump down my throat.

I think Gordon was just using JtL as an example as to show how not to add content to an MMO post-release. Especially something as drastically different from the base game as it was.

It's hard to say whether this is any indication they will have space combat or not, although it has been alluded to on a couple occasions by the developers. On what level it will be still remains to be seen.

I would not rule out a space combat system that moved away from the 100% twitch style of combat. I still like the idea of guild-run capital ships with player-controlled turrets. That does make it sort of twitch based but is definitely limited.

That being said, we have to remember there is a ground game going on too. I'm afraid if they DO start loading a bunch of content into space, the ground part may suffer due to lack of focus. But who knows they might have given the hero engine to a different group of devs and said, "here, build a space game."

I would think space and ground content would be in at launch, unless the space content is really nothing special. As for your comment about another dev group working on space, if only BioWare bought folks who are making a game called Black Prophecy. The type of physics, systems, and the way that space combat will work in that game is just amazing.

http://www.massively.com/2010/03/12/gdc10-an-in-depth-look-at-black-prophecy/

Wow that looks amazing... But if they made space combat look like that with a very in-depth mechanic wouldn't it overshadow the base ground game? We would essentially be getting two games in one. I would think of space combat (in TOR) as being more of a large "perk" that compliments the ground game rather than having two entirely separate entities counteracting each-other. We would then have five pillars...

Don't get me wrong I'd love to see a very involved space combat system, but aside from a consumer's PoV I would think a developer would want to focus on the one central aspect of the game rather than give players too many opportunities to stray from what the base game has to offer.