EA is treating this like fast food

This will be my last post. If you're an EA employee reading this and actually care about what you do then maybe pass it on to management with the small hope that they too will care. If you're a player then feel free to say/troll whatever you want, but just do so knowing that all I ever wanted was the same thing you wanted: a great Star Wars MMO, which we've been deprived of now for about nine years.

My first question: how do you screw up a Star Wars MMO? Star Wars has such a rich story environment, I honestly don't understand why this keeps happening. It's almost like the people who design these Star Wars games don't really grasp what it is that makes an MMO fun. It's really just the little things that count. It doesn't cost $300 million to make a good MMO--it just takes a handful of true talent. It's an art, not a business, not a science, yet the industry is being destroyed by executives who treat these games as if they are cheeseburgers, when they should be viewing their product as what it is: fine art, much like Van Gogh paintings, many of which were only acclaimed posthumously.

Do you think Van Gogh was sitting there thinking, "How can I increase my profit margin on this painting. Hmm, maybe a speck of blue here, red there?" No, he crafted his masterpieces with the sole mindset of making a quality product, trusting his instincts, not listening to the rabble or worrying about anything else, and what happened? Well, his work went on to sell for hundreds of millions of dollars (way more than the cost of developing this game). Of course, Van Gogh's work didn't sell like that until far after his death, but that's the thing about art, you don't always reap the rewards immediately. It might take some time for people to recognize how great your product is, but when they do, you will cash in.

World of Warcraft started out with a fraction of the original subscribers this game had. Blizzard didn't panic, they kept plugging away, crafting their product as they saw fit. Like it or not, they created quite a masterpiece and years later they are still cashing in. EA, on the other hand, bailed on their own project before it even had a chance to be crafted into something great. Original developers were fired or quit, an obvious response to the lack of instant success, as subscribers were dropping. A cartel market was added to milk F2P and subscribers for more money, in an attempt to further cut production losses, and what should be a patch has now been labeled an expansion in order to cash in on the short term even more. Well, not every player is an idiot, and some of us can see through this sacrifice of quality for quarterly revenue.

Imagine if half the time spent on this stupid cartel market was used to put Pazaak in game? One year later, we can't even sit down in cantinas, have a drink with some friends, and gamble a bit. The Las Vegas of Star Wars, Nar Shaada, goes completely unused for any interesting end-game. The cartel action should be happening there, but instead we get to click on a lame yellow icon in the top of the screen and get to flip through a magazine. Players complain about the lack of interesting end-game and instead of addressing that time is spent trying to figure out how to juice us for as much money as possible before everyone jumps ship. Space rails, broken/dead Ilum, boxed-in world zones, horrible non-class quests, no mini-games, no immersion at max-level, etc, etc. If EA would just focus on making a quality product then guess what, the money would come.

It's just sickening that players have to endure this crap just to play the IP that they love. This game had potential. It still has potential, actually, but it's clear that EA is not willing to fully invest in developing that. To EA, this game is just a cheeseburger. The players want Van Gogh, but all we get is a value meal.
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lol at --> http://boards.gamefaqs.com/gfaqs/user.php?=89123