[MUD-Dev] Star Wars Galaxies: 1 character per server

[Josh Goldshlag]

From: "Caliban Tiresias Darklock" <caliban at darklock.com>

> But isn't it *normal* that lots of people won't buy your software?
> How much weight does it really carry for a potential user to say
> "I'm not going to buy your software"? Does anyone even care?
> Personally, I always assume that someone saying "I'm not going to
> buy your software" is really saying "this is the excuse I am going
> to use to justify pirating your software" -- he was never going to
> buy it anyway, and he just wanted a reason to pretend it's
> politically motivated instead of being stuck admitting that he's a
> thief.  The SCS/MCS debate on SWG, for example, is garnering a lot
> of indignant "well now I won't buy it" responses... and yet, even
> after saying they won't buy the software, people are remaining
> active in their PAs and talking about what they're going to do in
> the game. (The situation is even more prevalent in communities
> where you are altering a system that is already "live".)

> Is this overly cynical? Should I assume that the users who say
> they won't buy and yet continue to discuss how they will play are,
> in actuality, just impulsive hotheads who actually *will* buy the
> game and never meant they wouldn't? (And even if I did, how likely
> is it that a person like that is going to be a problem player?) 
> What patterns are other people seeing in this kind of user
> community behavior?

Essentially, I think 99% of the "I won't buy it"'s are all
talk. They believe that if enough people say it, the developer will
be forced to change the offending feature. After all, many of them
believe the whole point of having pre-release interaction with the
developers is so they can give feedback (I would argue that the real
point, from the developer's POV is to build pre-release hype,
leading to sales). When it comes down to it, these are usually
people that have invested hundreds, if not thousands of hours on
talking about a game that for most of them doesn't even exist
yet. Of course one minor change, like the MCS/SCS debate isn't going
to make them not buy the game.

Josh


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