Star Wars Galaxies – the once fantastic online role playing game where players could live in the Star Wars universe and pursue a myriad of goals much as one does in real life – has been invaded by what appears to be the ‘genius’ behind the creation of the New Coke formula.
If you play the game and have played lately, you’ve probably realized that the party is now basically over. What was once a fun & life-like game where one was free to choose one’s own destiny has become a boxed-in, restrictive, and limited “experience” that is destined for a short playing time.
For those of you who may be too young to remember, or may have forgotten, the New Coke fiasco, I’ll describe it here. Coca Cola, the world’s favorite beverage for about ONE HUDRED YEARS, decided some time ago to change its flavor. Not only did they change the flavor, but they eliminated the original flavor from all store shelves world wide. The only flavor you could buy was the New Coke flavor. Needless to say it was a colossal disaster.
No one liked the new flavor. People were going crazy trying to find the old flavor. Coca Cola was flooded with complaints and inquiries from consumers, distributors & stores. It was a mess. So soon after this blunder, they reintroduced the original flavor with the face saving label “Coca Cola Classic” which, of course, outsold New Coke by leaps and bounds. This is why your coke cans say “Classic” today.
No doubt some “marketing whiz” told the Coke executives, “you’ve got to be ‘fresh’ to keep up with Pepsi!”, “Out with the old. In with the new!”, “We’ve got to do something major!”. I can see the meeting now where this Madison Avenue “whiz kid” pitched this lunacy.
And so it is with Star Wars Galaxies. If you’ve been playing you know now that the entire game has changed. You’re now forced to choose only one of a limited number of professions; your single path is dictated by the game creators; and don’t even get me started on the mouse control changes. (I’m still getting over my headache).
The only good thing about the SWG changes is the new quests and new abilities.
I’ll never understand this obsession to change everything instead of just changing a few things. I will also never understand the tendency of companies to make sweeping decisions that affect their customers (and profits) without first surveying those customers to see what they want exactly.
I’m sure there were some complaints about the time it took to achieve certain game perks and abilities. But did rectifying that require a radical and complete game change? Did that necessitate eliminating skills and abilities players had worked weeks and even months to acquire? I’m certain no.
Hopefully the “new” SWG changes will go the way of New Coke and their “mastermind” will again be looking for work.
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Toli Cefail is a veteran professional marketer for over 20 years, a gamer & party girl :-)
The new coke fiasco was the world’s first and best end run around a expiring product protection. Coke was never going to be taken off the shelf forever. It was planed from the beginning to bring coke classic back to the public, but with a new name it was a NEW product therefore entitled to long term protection unlike the Coke whose protection was about to expire. Coke novel approach initially involved some revenue loss but was probably cheaper than lobbing for stronger protections from congress. At that time it probably would not have worked anyway.
Posted by: fred | November 24, 2005 at 03:43 PM