Hmmm, well, ignoring the whole issue with the NGE, I will say that I think your not being critical enough of Sony in this case. The issue with SWG going down is not one of a lack of players. To be perfectly blunt if they condensed servers they could easily pack them with people like the "old days". The Emulation project (which I lack discs for) benefits to an extent because it's only got one server at the moment. Pack all those "light" and "very light" servers into a few more condesed ones, and there you go.
The issue here is purely greed. SWG is a game that has long since recouped it's development costs, and has enough players interested (and dare I say addicted) to justify running a few servers. The issue is that with liscencing fees Sony doesn't feel there is enough of a profit to justify the game, when really, I would think a company with Sony's level of bad PR would want to keep it alive if it was just breaking even.
It's pretty much a "F@ck the customers and the fans" move, and there is no way around that.
To be honest, I also have some doubts about the whole liscensing costs issue as well, largely because Sony has apparently not announced any intention to take down "Clone Wars Adventures", or at least not that I have seen. They are already maintaining the rights to run that game, and it's a point that I think a lot of people are missing.
Now yes, players leaving SWG en-masse after the NGE probably didn't help things, but apparently the game managed to survive all this time just the same. What's more, I think the issue here is just as much one where Sony decided to do whatever it wanted to do, and ignored fans who were speaking out against the new engine before it happened. As the number of people leaving showed, it was not a tiny minority of neighsayers who jumped ship. SoE was also too arrogant to decide to dial back the game to an earlier build, which they doubtlessly could have done very easily, the current emulation project sort of demonstrates now people can
even re-construct the game without their resources. Heck, Sony could even have run differant versions of the game on differant servers.
The basic point here is that now or in the past, the majority of the blame has to be placed on Sony. The same Sony that took away features from PS-3 users, inspired one of the biggest hate inspired corperate hacker attacks in history, and then pretty much tossed users a bit of free advertising in compensation for their loss of service.
It's a small thing, but keeping SWG alive, or giving it to another company like Bioware under contract for them to run it (you know as a sort of wierd bonus feature/product for ToR or something... maybe playable from a computer inside the game like "Day Of The Tentcle" did with the original Maniac Mansion... that would be amusing), you know "it's free if you use it" or whatever), or heck just making both versions public domain, would be a small start on building them some genuine good will.
See the thing is that people would say I don't understand "complicated issues", really I understand perfectly. In the end it all comes down to a choice to turn it off or not, and really it's that simple. There is no question that this could be sustained without going to a FTP model, but Sony figures they aren't making enough money to justify it, and that right there is the problem since I have no doubts that they would continue to make a profit, and even a loss would be justified through the positive PR.
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