Rumor has it SWG was shut down by Lucas himself, who refused to renew SWG's SW license to make room for the Tortanic. (That alone shows you what Lucas knows about gaming. And there are yet other rumors that SWG's infamous NGE came about at the urging of Lucas, who wanted the game to become more WoW-like, but I digress.)
Heh, well that culprit is one of the reasons I don't care much for Lucasarts these days. I was waiting on the newest management shift to reach fruition before I gave up on them though. This was
not the kind of shift I had in mind.
I wish I still had all my notes on all the links I found when I was knee-deep in research on the NGE and Tortanic fiasco. I'd post all my sources if I still had them.
To sum it up though, LucasArts more or less turned into LucasIndustry when Jim Ward took over in 2004. It's questionable who really set this ball rolling, George Lucas or Jim Ward, but it was at this point that the attitude of LA all changed. Ward (perhaps under Lucas's guidance) was obsessed with making LucasArts one of the top 5 game companies, and eventually become #1. As most know, when people involved in sports just so they can win 1st place, they have a tendency to do more harm to themselves than good. They 'might' achieve their goal, but will often become killjoys even to themselves in the process. This brought an end to most of the creativity in the company. It's when L.A. stopped trying to make good games, and started trying to make games that would sell like hotcakes (keep in mind, good games often sell like hotcakes. but not all games that sell like hotcakes are good). This "#1 or bust" attitude of course got SOE caught in a Darth Vader force choke. SOE's vision for SWG, which LucasArts LOVED when it was in development, would never have impressed Ward. And when Ward saw that SWG wasn't selling as well as WoW, demanded that SOE change it. Time for formulas. What's selling? WoW. Logical solution: turn SWG into WoW. the result was the greatest exodus of angry gamers in the history of MMO's. It's an embarrassment that SOE still hasn't been able to shake. There is STILL somewhat of a guerrilla war against SOE today, even though the NGE happened over 7 years ago. It's very similar to how we're treating NCsoft now.
This train of thought didn't go away when Ward stepped down either. It continued on and kept LA getting itself into odd situations. The most notable was selling their soul to the devil (EA Games). Teamed with Bioware (who had given them two VERY lucrative KOTOR games), the dream of WoW-killing wasn't over, so they developed the most expensive MMO in gaming history. "Hey, if it costs far more to make than it did to make WoW, it's gotta be better, right?" Of course, those of us who don't have our heads shoved up our own behinds, know why WoW-killing is blatantly unrealistic. But LA was like a treasure-hunter, killing himself with dehydration while running through the desert chasing a hallucinatory city of gold. I think the TORtanic memes sum up the rest of that chapter of the story.
When Paul Meegan stepped down in 2012, it was seen by many as LA's opportunity to return to its glorious roots. Now sadly, we'll never know what might have happened.
