Behind the Curtain: How far is too far?
What would it take for you to cancel your subscription and jump ship to another MMO? If Blizzard announced World of Starcraft as their next-gen MMO at Blizzcon this year, would you stop playing World of Warcraft in favour of it?
Let me share a little story with you. A few year ago, I was a fairly 'hardcore' Star Wars Galaxies player. My main character had a Master Doctor/Master Teras Kasi Artist spec, I was powering up through the Rebel ranks, and I was working my way through the quest chain to unlock my Jedi character. Then, in April of 2005, the Combat Upgrade came along. The Combat Upgrade completely changed how combat worked in Galaxies, and despite what the prevailing mood may have been at the time, it wasn't all bad. The Upgrade changed the HUD in the game, changed the way special attacks and actions were queued up and paid for (previously, you could kill or incapacitate your character through using certain moves too often) and also changed how mob and player level balanced out against one another; a side effect of which was that soloing suddenly became much harder than it had been before. Essentially, it completely changed the way combat on the ground worked.
Naturally the wailing and gnashing of teeth could be heard across the Internet. Most of this was brought on by gamers who were being made to relearn their favourite game almost from scratch. Players felt that their characters had been arbitrarily nerfed – combinations of weapons and armour that had previously been nigh-unbeatable had become almost worthless overnight. Not only that, but the release itself was plagued with bugs from the start, antagonising players further. Cooler heads maintained that the reason those combinations had been unbeatable was down to the previous combat system being ridiculously complicated and hard for the developers to balance, and pointed out that a major release like this was almost guaranteed to come with bugs. While some people listened and practised patience, others voted with their feet and left in droves.
This is probably the part where other, angrier, people would take the time to tear strips off SOE and blame John Smedley for everything that went wrong; but I'm not going to do that. SOE had valid reasons for making the changes they did, I think they just handled it badly. Personally, I think that they were feeling pressured by the success of World of Warcraft, and ended up rushing the Combat Upgrade out the door a little too soon, in an attempt to regain the players they were probably already losing.
WoW had been out for around six months at this point, and plenty of players had already chosen to try it out. More than one ex-player in my guild at the time suggested that SOE had tried to make Galaxies more like WoW and failed terribly, so why not just try the real thing? I didn't, and I stuck with Galaxies for a month or two more, but a voice in the back of my head had started whispering to me to walk away. A lot of the people I played with regularly had slipped away by then, my guild had fallen apart too, and Galaxies just wasn't the same game any more, and I eventually bit the bullet and cancelled my account. You could have argued that the game was 'better' than it had been in the past, and I might have agreed with you, but the game had simply lost its sparkle for me by then, and I couldn't help shake the feeling there were more changes to come. I was correct, and in November of 2005, SOE rolled out the 'New Game Enhancements' and enhanced the game beyond all recognition. To this day, I have yet to go back and play Galaxies again.
So, there's my story of heartbreak, betrayal and cancelled accounts. Well, maybe just the latter. Have any of you experienced something similar? Did the Combat Upgrade or New Game Enhancements drive you off? Did Everquest 2 drive you to cancel you Everquest account? Hit the comments below and share your stories, would you kindly?
