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I think we all have worked in a company such as you described Woody.

The problem with SOE/Austin is obviously it's management. There was alot of Talented people working on SWG in it's incarnation including Jeff Freeman. The popularity of WOW really hit a nerve with the brass at SOE Operations and Im sure Smed got a nasty phone call telling him to get subscriber numbers up. Im sure he was in a panic to find some way to make SWG more profitable, as well as he should.

This is where I blame bad management. Smed In his, I call it "Lazy" research of how to lure in more subscribers he descided to copy other games such as Planetside and WOW. Be damned the current customers. Jeff did come up with the Idea of making SWG a FPS so it would be more "Star Warsy" as he bragged about on his blog pre NGE and Smed gave the green light.

Running a Multi-million dollar Franchise with the Star Wars licence you would think the management of Austin would take the time to understand why they were losing the battle in the MMO gaming world. It wasn't because of SWG being a boring game, it was because of the non stop annoying bugs and the never ending changes that constantly changed game play. If Smed and the crew would have actually listened to their player base instead of hiring an outside consulting firm I believe that Jeff's Idea of turning SWG into a FPS would have never seen the light of day.