Sony...The death of a great game

[coldhart]

Sony has been killing games for years.

Anyone old enough will remember Star Wars Gallaxies. SWG was a great game in it's time. It had a huge player base and everyone who played, loved it through and through. That is until Sony decided to make a change. Around 80% or more of the player base quit the game within a week or two because of this bonehead decision. You would think Sony would see this as something that needed to be addressed...maybe even reverted back to it's original state. But no... Sony kept it's decision to change the game so drastically and players didn't return. It wasn't too long after, Sony made the decision to close the doors on the game and shut it down for good due to profit loss.

This is exactly what Sony does. They don't listen to the player base and they don't care about the player base. They're a strict profit and loss company with employees who apparently have no idea of how to run a game. Their history is riddled with one poor decision after another.

Now, the first mistake on AH's part was partnering with Sony. And we don't know what the contract between AH and Sony entails. But unless AH signed over all decision making to Sony, they need to learn when to put their foot down. If not then Sony will run HD2 into the ground. And if Sony doesn't have full control over the decision making process, then AH would be just as much at fault for the PSN as Sony...of course they wouldn't want to admit that. It's much easier to just blame Sony.

As it stands if the PSN mandate goes through and stays in place, 64% (2/3) of the world's countries can no longer legally play the game. Now most countries who can have a PSN account are quite a bit larger than most others who can not. So we won't see the initial player base falling off by 2/3. More likely we will see somewhere around 1/3 less player base just from the PSN. However; we also have to factor in all the players who say they will NOT get a PSN even though they could in their country. Yes, a lot of people talk ♥♥♥♥. Quite a few say they won't and will anyway and continue to play the game. But some will stand their ground so we might see another 10%, 15% or even 20% drop in player base.

I'm one who likes playing with my friends above anything else. I'll leave a good game just to go hang out with my friends in a different game. And that's exactly what we'll see happening...people will miss they friends who are no longer playing HD2, or can't play, and they'll start hanging out with them in different games. Which as you figured, will cause the HD2 player base to dwindle down even further. Also, if you're like me and find solo play too damn hard (I'm older now and eye/hand coordination and reaction time isn't what it used to be) then you might start getting aggravated when it gets harder and harder to find a "good" group of randos and refuse to play solo.

If the PSN mandate goes through and stays in place and Sony is allowed to make even more bonehead decisions, I predict HD2 will more than likely be a dead game by the end of the year. Yes I may be jumping the gun on that. Maybe the community will shock me and it won't be as drastic as I think. But we also haven't seen what Sony has in store for the game over the next year.

[Urist]

That's a lot of text.

[Richard Upton Pickman]

Originally posted by Urist:

That's a lot of text.

Im just gonna get an AI to read me this so i dont have to use my eyes for so much text.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

Originally posted by Urist:

That's a lot of text.

You know, back in my days we used to have books and newspapers. You know, the physical stuff. Crazy, I know!

That amount of text that you call "a lot" would not even be considered big enough to make a news article on a quarter of a newspaper page. You might want to reconsider and get over it.

[Mount Nomad]

tl;dr Sony bad.

Thumbs up!

[Curcă]

They did this with almost every game that wasn't single player. And yes the game will die by the end of the year if they are allowed to continue.

[Frost Spectre]

Leaders doing bad decisions is a sign that they have gone mad with power, as far as I know, there is no cure for the corrupt, only way is to replace them and punish the corrupt leaders.

Or else they just behave like malignant tumours, they destroy everything they touch, in order to prolong their own lifestyle.

[.㊎.㊍.㊌.㊋.㊏.]

put the game in the global market, SOLD
then restrict it in 69 country ? RIP
nice, a batman trap

[Harzath]

Oh good, someone finally brought up Starwars Galaxies and how this situation is an odd feeling of deja vu.

[SoulSlayer]

Originally posted by coldhart:

Sony has been killing games for years.

Anyone old enough will remember Star Wars Gallaxies. SWG was a great game in it's time. It had a huge player base and everyone who played, loved it through and through. That is until Sony decided to make a change. Around 80% or more of the player base quit the game within a week or two because of this bonehead decision. You would think Sony would see this as something that needed to be addressed...maybe even reverted back to it's original state. But no... Sony kept it's decision to change the game so drastically and players didn't return. It wasn't too long after, Sony made the decision to close the doors on the game and shut it down for good due to profit loss.

This is exactly what Sony does. They don't listen to the player base and they don't care about the player base. They're a strict profit and loss company with employees who apparently have no idea of how to run a game. Their history is riddled with one poor decision after another.

Now, the first mistake on AH's part was partnering with Sony. And we don't know what the contract between AH and Sony entails. But unless AH signed over all decision making to Sony, they need to learn when to put their foot down. If not then Sony will run HD2 into the ground. And if Sony doesn't have full control over the decision making process, then AH would be just as much at fault for the PSN as Sony...of course they wouldn't want to admit that. It's much easier to just blame Sony.

As it stands if the PSN mandate goes through and stays in place, 64% (2/3) of the world's countries can no longer legally play the game. Now most countries who can have a PSN account are quite a bit larger than most others who can not. So we won't see the initial player base falling off by 2/3. More likely we will see somewhere around 1/3 less player base just from the PSN. However; we also have to factor in all the players who say they will NOT get a PSN even though they could in their country. Yes, a lot of people talk ♥♥♥♥. Quite a few say they won't and will anyway and continue to play the game. But some will stand their ground so we might see another 10%, 15% or even 20% drop in player base.

I'm one who likes playing with my friends above anything else. I'll leave a good game just to go hang out with my friends in a different game. And that's exactly what we'll see happening...people will miss they friends who are no longer playing HD2, or can't play, and they'll start hanging out with them in different games. Which as you figured, will cause the HD2 player base to dwindle down even further. Also, if you're like me and find solo play too damn hard (I'm older now and eye/hand coordination and reaction time isn't what it used to be) then you might start getting aggravated when it gets harder and harder to find a "good" group of randos and refuse to play solo.

If the PSN mandate goes through and stays in place and Sony is allowed to make even more bonehead decisions, I predict HD2 will more than likely be a dead game by the end of the year. Yes I may be jumping the gun on that. Maybe the community will shock me and it won't be as drastic as I think. But we also haven't seen what Sony has in store for the game over the next year.

This wouldn’t have happened if arrowhead weren’t r!trded and partnered with Sony. They knew what they did and brought this upon themselves.

[GHDW]

here I was enjoying tf2 all this time and never experienced the corpo abuse most of you have.
I'm not gloating, more of a somber reminder that I've been in a bubble for a long time.

[Zero McDol]

SWG was Published under Sony eh?.... Well, now I see why that MMO died. I never played it back then, but at least now I understand what may have happened a little more.

Unfortunately as a free-to-play MMO, I doubt that the pain was that bad for SWG, outside of losing a free-to-play Star Wars MMO. Helldivers 2 though, is a ->paid<- always-online game that is now banning a multitude of countries via a requirement and will be enforcing the PSN requirement as of tomorrow.

The backlash is far more widespread this time around, and I highly doubt that the game will survive it.

[coldhart]

You had to buy SWG just as we had to buy HD2. And trust me there were people with tons more hours in the game than HD2...doesn't even come close to what was lost. But my point is Sony will ruin whatever it gets it's hands on if not stopped by the partner company...AH

[Harzath]

Originally posted by coldhart:

You had to buy SWG just as we had to buy HD2. And trust me there were people with tons more hours in the game than HD2...doesn't even come close to what was lost. But my point is Sony will ruin whatever it gets it's hands on if not stopped by the partner company...AH

Wasn't Starwars Galaxies also a game you had to pay a subscription for as well much like Everquest? I distinctly remember something of the sort at the time when i first saw it on shelves as a kid in a CompUSA

[coldhart]

yes. 14.99 per month
So everyone lost quite a bit more back then. All that time...all your achievements over the years... all the money invested, just gone almost overnight

[Oxiplayer]

September 1st and yes, the game is just a ghost of what it was after they blocked so many countries. 16k players Yesterday. That says it all. I would like to know what where they thinking it would happen, before taking that decision. For hd2 16k is like being dead.