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Updated: Wednesday, 09 November 2005
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| Star Wars Galaxies |
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By Christian Svensson
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| | Why has SOE made so many drastic changes to its MMOG Star Wars:
Galaxies? Company president John Smedley spoke to Next Generation about
that factors that forced the changes, feedback from the community and
ramifications for the future of the franchise. | For up-to-date game industry news and challenging opinion, delivered
to your in-box every weekday morning, subscribe to Next Generation
Morning Bulletin. It's simple and free. Go to http://www.next-gen.biz/registration/
---
 Smedley says, "LucasArts and SOE took a very close look at
Galaxies to find out what we could improve and what needed to change to
make the game more fun for existing players and what would make it
appeal more to a wider audience. We did a lot of research and focus
testing before we undertook these steps."
SOE and LucasArts pulled in Crompton and Associates (which handles
product focus testing for a number of top publishers) to conduct the
initial studies. Unfortunately, SOE isn't able to divulge the exact
data that came from these efforts, but it came to the conclusion that
the game wasn't living up to its potential (both in terms of fun and as
a market opportunity).
"We got a lot of feedback about what was wrong and what wasn't. We saw
early on that people weren't satisfied with the combat, so we decided
to try something pretty radical."
The combat changes to the game went live some months ago and as with
most MMOG changes, there was much public outcry on the forums. But SOE
didn't experience any drop off subscriber numbers. On the contrary,
Galaxies continued to grow faster than any other title run by SOE.
"The combat [change] was really just the first part of it," explains
Smedley. "The overriding [issue] was the sheer number of professions in
the game."
He adds, "In a sense that was one of the strengths of the game because
you could be just about anything in the world, but it also had an
impact on our ability to balance these professions and make them fun
and unique. The feedback told us that there wasn't enough
diversity and that people's choices [with regard to their professions]
should mean something.
"So we decided to shrink down the number of professions and concentrate
on more prototypical Star Wars iconic elements. A bounty hunter is a
very iconic thing. Everyone immediately thinks Boba Fett. So we made
that mean something now."
Jedi Exclusivity
The original design of the game was very much influenced by the Richard
Garriot (Ultima Online) and Brad McQuaid (early EverQuest) schools of
MMOG design. That is to say that the very best experiences in the game
would come from massive time investment, trial and error and endurance
of hardship. The rewards that come from that are significant but highly
exclusive.
Along those lines, it was incredibly difficult to become a Jedi. In
fact, the mechanism for which it is accomplished (which was secret for
a long time) is that a character has to master five specific
professions (out of more than 20), and those professions were selected
for that character secretly by the game at the moment of creation. The
player never knew which specific five would unlock the Jedi path. It
was an incredible time sink, to say the least.
In the new design philosophy players can start on the path of Jedi as
one of the nine selectable professions at the moment of character
creation. In this way, some of the previously secret "cool stuff" is
going to be more accessible to a lot more people. Smedley is keen
to point out that characters can be "force sensitive" from day one
rather than necessarily a Jedi instantly. "There are a lot of
different levels within that [profession], so the people who've been
[working down the Jedi path] for a long time will be much more powerful
than the people just coming up. We're still rewarding people for their
loyalty over the years."
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