SWGEmu half-year financial report (first half of 2014)

[amh007]

ibm?

SoftLayer is IBM-owned, but I don't really understand the question either. SL has always been expensive/quality.

[Vlada]

SoftLayer is IBM-owned, but I don't really understand the question either. SL has always been expensive/quality.

Fact is we renegotiated prices and they are actually 60% or 70% lower than when they were in the second half of 2013.

[Gaje]

We are not closed down yet, so ****** cant be too worried, good to see the finances look steady

[sleepwalker]

Like Vlada said, the only cause of the downward spiral is the lawyer fees. That's not a reason not to donate but a simple yes or no from ****** could solve our financial issue.

Big companies are like big government. When they see something they want to get rid of they generally play the financial game with them, which is letting things take as long as possible until the other party runs out of money and can't win.

Unfortunately, I used to work at ******. Sure, I worked in the IT dept, but I still mingled with all the other dept's. obviously. They do not let IP fall through the cracks, ever. They normally maintain a stranglehold on all IP even if it is simply shelved never to be used again. I will say this however... the ONE thing you have going for you right now is a prior agreement with SOE. ****** may be asshats when it comes to IP, but they are also deadly serious about agreements/contracts almost to a fault. If EMU has proof of an agreement with SOE, ****** will bite the bullet. If not, I expect this to be closed down as soon as they find the time to get around to it, and every single one of us who played it, will get a bill in the mail from the Mouse. ok, im joking about that last part, but after being under their employ... I'm only half joking.

Even if we are legally in the right, ****** has the money to drown us in bogus lawsuits. Sadly, it's a fairly common practice for large corporations to just financially destroy smaller projects even if said projects aren't doing anything wrong.

Are lawyer costs an ongoing factor, or was the $5,500 for letters the end of it? This seems like it could be a major threat to the project if it's ongoing.

[Trady]

I regularly see 1500 server pop so if we all just donated $3 per month then all is groovy!

T.

[justin210485]

$3-$5 month is very do able even with my broke ***.

[Blahw]

$3-$5 month is very do able even with my broke ***.

im broke but im donating

[alix]

I am a huge fan of this game, and am thankful for the original developers, midway developers and the current developers, without them we wouldnt not have a game to play. What i do not understand is why limit the world, reduce drop ratio's, not spawn elders randomly around dath? This is just a test server yes, but one you need donations to upkeep and none of my friends, over 200 will play the current version because it is mildly lame (strictly based on the cool stuff we used to loot) I have a masters in Micro economics and financial analysis and money movement and would like to share my expertise to revitalize the game. I am going to get flamed, and frankly, i expect it because if there is one thing i know about dealing with programmers and such is that they are righteous and egotistical, which is fine, so am I, but what i do know is that even if you have a small portion of the community saying yay this is the way we want it, the others will just leave. I say, keep the loot ratios the way that they are but make the higher end mobs like elders drop weapons worth calling home to mom for. I was flamed last time cause everyone was like "this is how it was in Live".... Well maybe if you only experienced half the game.

All i am asking for is 2-3% greater chance to loot weapons that dont get deleted cause they suck, random world spawn for night sister elders and alike (they were there before) and just an added element to let the people that enjoy the leet setting have their fun too. Dont let your idea of what you believe is right sway your judgment, cause in the end, you would have done it for nothing. \

Flame me all you want, double guns to all that do. I miss the game for what it was and wish the vision would be shared by my fellow fans.

Also, why not bring back jedi even if it is broken, GIVE ME A REASON TO DONATE>

[Miztah]

I am a huge fan of this game, and am thankful for the original developers, midway developers and the current developers, without them we wouldnt not have a game to play. What i do not understand is why limit the world, reduce drop ratio's, not spawn elders randomly around dath? This is just a test server yes, but one you need donations to upkeep and none of my friends, over 200 will play the current version because it is mildly lame (strictly based on the cool stuff we used to loot) I have a masters in Micro economics and financial analysis and money movement and would like to share my expertise to revitalize the game. I am going to get flamed, and frankly, i expect it because if there is one thing i know about dealing with programmers and such is that they are righteous and egotistical, which is fine, so am I, but what i do know is that even if you have a small portion of the community saying yay this is the way we want it, the others will just leave. I say, keep the loot ratios the way that they are but make the higher end mobs like elders drop weapons worth calling home to mom for. I was flamed last time cause everyone was like "this is how it was in Live".... Well maybe if you only experienced half the game.

All i am asking for is 2-3% greater chance to loot weapons that dont get deleted cause they suck, random world spawn for night sister elders and alike (they were there before) and just an added element to let the people that enjoy the leet setting have their fun too. Dont let your idea of what you believe is right sway your judgment, cause in the end, you would have done it for nothing. \

Flame me all you want, double guns to all that do. I miss the game for what it was and wish the vision would be shared by my fellow fans.

Also, why not bring back jedi even if it is broken, GIVE ME A REASON TO DONATE>

No. This is also not the proper location for this discussion. You're welcome to post your dead horse beating topic in Future Server Ideas.

[alix]

LOl thats what i mean... Dead Horse Beating Topic.... There is a reason that the poor dead horse is still being beaten. And i think this is a perfect spot for it. If you want to sustain a more consistent donation pool, you should stop trying to make people feel dumb and w/e you are right no one cares, lol reminds me of SOE, so i guess at least we can simulate that. Thanks for your poor response.

[Miztah]

LOl thats what i mean... Dead Horse Beating Topic.... There is a reason that the poor dead horse is still being beaten. And i think this is a perfect spot for it. If you want to sustain a more consistent donation pool, you should stop trying to make people feel dumb and w/e you are right no one cares, lol reminds me of SOE, so i guess at least we can simulate that. Thanks for your poor response.

Development of this project will continue with or without donations. The only thing a lack of donations will do is make Basilisk go away, our development process will stay the same.

We're emulating 14.1, that is the scope of the project. It's been stated hundreds of times before. We're not looking for feedback on improving the game or your opinion on how to get more donations. Once our 14.1 goal is reached, the team that handles Suncrusher will start considering player feedback on game improvements.

[Murkanator]

I can honestly say, that I would donate quite often if the server had JTL. I been watching this website off and on for 6 years now.
$3 per month? try $200 a month for me alone. I miss it so much it makes me not care about money, but then again I never really did care for money.
What I do care about, was the JTL multi-crew ship mechanics and blowing up Star Destroyers, and Corvettes.

1 of 2 things WILL happen from this point forward, let me list them now for you.

1. This server continues to fail more than succeed at monthly costs, due to the lack of JTL and eventually shuts down.

or

2. JTL gets re-birthed a ton of cash flow comes in, and then ****** shuts it down.

I will leave the future of the game up to the devs at this point, but seriously 1700 people online minus alts.. is pry maybe 400 ish players.

P.S. ****** would NEVER pay the devs ANYTHING for the re-code period, Only shut it down and hire 20 times as many coders to get it done quicker.
The only money to be had here for all the swgemu staffs work is release JTL. Plus there is a new SWG coming but not in the Star Wars universe which makes me personally not want to play it.. EVER

Murkanator

[Vlada]

I can honestly say, that I would donate quite often if the server had JTL. I been watching this website off and on for 6 years now.
$3 per month? try $200 a month for me alone. I miss it so much it makes me not care about money, but then again I never really did care for money.
What I do care about, was the JTL multi-crew ship mechanics and blowing up Star Destroyers, and Corvettes.

1 of 2 things WILL happen from this point forward, let me list them now for you.

1. This server continues to fail more than succeed at monthly costs, due to the lack of JTL and eventually shuts down.

or

2. JTL gets re-birthed a ton of cash flow comes in, and then ****** shuts it down.

I will leave the future of the game up to the devs at this point, but seriously 1700 people online minus alts.. is pry maybe 400 ish players.

P.S. ****** would NEVER pay the devs ANYTHING for the re-code period, Only shut it down and hire 20 times as many coders to get it done quicker.
The only money to be had here for all the swgemu staffs work is release JTL. Plus there is a new SWG coming but not in the Star Wars universe which makes me personally not want to play it.. EVER

Murkanator

There is so much wring in this its ridiculous.

P.S. We always had over 1k unique IP's online, wich means at least 1k different people, and that doesnt include family members that play through same internet connection. Sure there were always AFK toons, but that number has always been between 1/3 and 1/4 of the server population, still way above 1k. If we compare those numbers to what we have from SOE live servers, we can only come to a conclusion that even on a bad day, Bas is more populated than almost all Live servers back in the day.

[darkliefSG]

I'm just seeing this. I wasn't aware that financials were posted, it's great that this is transparent for the community, even more reason to support the EMU.

Just a few observations about ******/Lucas:

I live and work in the SF Bay Area, and have worked in the Gaming industry here. I have a few friends at LA, ******, as well as a number of other shops big and small. My observation is that no news from ****** is probably good news for the project. ****** understands a few things, one is that in the acquisition they also acquired a bunch of various communities of, sometimes rabid, SW fans. They also understand that leaving those communities alone, and in many cases actually supporting their efforts either overtly or though omission is in their best interest. Every SW fan is a potential paying customer for ****** and they know that.

You are not dealing with SOE here, of any organization ****** understands two things better than any entertainment company that has ever existed a) Marketing and b) How to extract money from its consumers. This isn't a slam on them, if anything its a compliment, it's something they are really good at (if you have children you probably already know this). That said they also understand the downstream consequences of snuffing out a community driven project like SWGemu, because those community members are probably involved in other non-game SW communities (501'st is a great example of this) so any action taken has exponential downstream consequences.

If there is anything the Gaming industry learned from the handling of SWG by SOE it's the impact of exponential downstream consequences on the bottom line. SOE is barely recovering from this hit to their reputation still 10 years on, at least here it is in the epicenter of where games are born and developed. Things like "Don't pull a Smedly on your community" are still heard in conference rooms here. And there are devs that flat out refuse to work at shops with bad reputations around Gaming communities.

****** wants no part of a marketing nightmare like that. They understand marketing and money and avoid any bad publicity like the plague, any action against a SW community would be viewed very negatively by SW fans and the industry here, which is something they definitely can't afford, given their game production efforts here.

So my observation is no news is probably good news, they know economic goodwill means you will probably go see the next ****** SW film and continue to take your Family to ******land and buy SW related ****** merch. And this for them has way more upside than attempting to snuff out a community driven project of passionate SW fans.

Just my 2 credits

[Vlada]

I'm just seeing this. I wasn't aware that financials were posted, it's great that this is transparent for the community, even more reason to support the EMU.

Just a few observations about ******/Lucas:

I live and work in the SF Bay Area, and have worked in the Gaming industry here. I have a few friends at LA, ******, as well as a number of other shops big and small. My observation is that no news from ****** is probably good news for the project. ****** understands a few things, one is that in the acquisition they also acquired a bunch of various communities of, sometimes rabid, SW fans. They also understand that leaving those communities alone, and in many cases actually supporting their efforts either overtly or though omission is in their best interest. Every SW fan is a potential paying customer for ****** and they know that.

You are not dealing with SOE here, of any organization ****** understands two things better than any entertainment company that has ever existed a) Marketing and b) How to extract money from its consumers. This isn't a slam on them, if anything its a compliment, it's something they are really good at (if you have children you probably already know this). That said they also understand the downstream consequences of snuffing out a community driven project like SWGemu, because those community members are probably involved in other non-game SW communities (501'st is a great example of this) so any action taken has exponential downstream consequences.

If there is anything the Gaming industry learned from the handling of SWG by SOE it's the impact of exponential downstream consequences on the bottom line. SOE is barely recovering from this hit to their reputation still 10 years on, at least here it is in the epicenter of where games are born and developed. Things like "Don't pull a Smedly on your community" are still heard in conference rooms here. And there are devs that flat out refuse to work at shops with bad reputations around Gaming communities.

****** wants no part of a marketing nightmare like that. They understand marketing and money and avoid any bad publicity like the plague, any action against a SW community would be viewed very negatively by SW fans and the industry here, which is something they definitely can't afford, given their game production efforts here.

So my observation is no news is probably good news, they know economic goodwill means you will probably go see the next ****** SW film and continue to take your Family to ******land and buy SW related ****** merch. And this for them has way more upside than attempting to snuff out a community driven project of passionate SW fans.

Just my 2 credits

I am inclined to agree with this.