Last weekend we had our first ever Influencers Summit. It was a lot of fun, and I have to say I learned quite a bit. We deliberately brought people in that were some of our biggest criitics. We wanted to hear directly from them and understand the issues they had.
At one point I spent an hour or so talking with a group of the Star Wars Galaxies players that had come. It was a very interesting and enlightening discussion, and I wanted to thank all of them for their candor.
I wanted to make sure I close the loop on that discussion because I walked away with some new priorities.
Here are my thoughts:
1) Content is the single biggest thing people playing SWG want. - this surprised me. From our perspective we had thought revising the systems in the game (i.e. expertise revamps) was a bigger deal. While they did say this was important, I was susprised they ranked this higher than working on PVP.
I would agree with this as well. One of the things that SWG is lacking more than anything else is content. Smed... have you read any of the recent interviews with the Bio-ware guys there in Austin? The reason they are so successful is because of their ability to tell a story. I think it's just plain sad that there is no level of story telling in SWG whatsoever.
Seriously... look at the interview they did about thier upcoming MMO and you'll see what I mean.
2) This lead to a discussion about involving the community in the decision making process. They pointed out that we do a lousy job at this, and they're right. As such, you can expect a poll in the near future to help us prioritize things for the next 6-12 months.
Sorry Smed but we get this promise every year. I heard the same thing from Rogue5 last year in Indy at the Summit. Things are always good for a few weeks then they degrade back to where we are now. You really need to shake things up there staff wise.
3) Guild Management tools in SWG aren't up to snuff - I went ballistic when I heard you can only manage your guild through the terminal. We need to fix this.
Yes you do. Can we do the same for Vendor management as well? Like having admin privelges on Vendors?
4) Server consolidation - we need to fasttrack this - it's a very hard problem, and the team has had other priorities.
Smed, have you talked to the rest of your team about this? They are steadfast AGAINST it. You have mentioned this before on the forums but I don't think the SOE SWG team is with you on this one.
ALSO... We need a housing purge ASAP!!!!!!
5) We need to explain ourselves and the thinking behind changes a lot better
Again, we hear this every year around fan fest time. Again, you really need to shake up the community relations team. Sorry.
6) Once we got past the "please bring back the pre-NGE servers" (no, we're never going to do that) the discussion really got down to brass tacks. Many people ask me why I don't post a lot here, and the simple answer is that it's hard to follow a thread when many of the posts end up being "bring back pre-NGE servers" and other issues we've moved past. Please don't misunderstand me on this - I get why some people want this. It's just that it isn't possible and at some point if we're going to move the game forward new ideas are at the top of the list of things we should be discussing. That's my view anyways.
I'm a day one vet and I've played every iteration of SWG. I've also played all of the betas as well. I'm not interested in pre-NGE. I am however interested in bringing back some of the elements of the NGE like creature handling, scouting, BE, etc. Not adding more professions but maybe adding these skills back in a meaningful way. Again, peek in on what BioWare Austin is saying about this stuff and you'll see what I mean.
OH Yeah, 1rst... Message Edited by AnzelVincir on 02-09-2007 01:09 PM
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