Back when the BUE first hit, many threads and posts compared it to Star Wars Galaxies' infamous New Game Enhancements, the NGE. Many decried the comparison as unfair, and pointed to the great direction that the BUE would allow the game to go in. Omega items and difficulty were brought up as things to look forward to, and in every doom and gloom thread there were dozens of posts from players assuring other players that the sky was not, in fact, falling.
And yet, with the recent communication disasters, it has become very clear that Gaz has not learned from their own mistakes or the mistakes of others in the industry. Much like the NGE's beginnings, the BUE was not the enhancement to the game it was claimed to be, rather it had ulterior motives behind it: in this case, the advent of the console port and the eventual need to synchronize the two platforms, to the PC platform's detriment. Just like the NGE, the BUE was unfinished and unpolished, with heroes/classes that did not perform nearly as well as they had beforehand, amidst bugs aplenty and poor design decisions. Just like the NGE, there was a shortage of new content for months.
But those similarities were not enough to justify the direct comparison at the time the update launched. With the handling of Omega items, Omega Prestige and the severe lack of respect the higher-ups have for the playerbase, though, not only has the BUE proven to be an NGE-level disaster, it has arguably surpassed the infamous patch in its damage dealt.
Despite the NGE, SWG lasted for six more years, during which time the game underwent significant improvements driven by community feedback. SOE, to its credit, spent a long time re-adding features that players were deservedly upset about losing, and adding features that players had asked for. They weren't 100% transparent, no, but their communication improved considerably and the higher-ups, particularly John Smedley, very obviously learned from that massive mistake.
What we've seen from Gaz's higher-ups is, well, nothing. Cancelling a planned community event and refusing to answer the license question--after this much of a debacle, company policy is no excuse. Change direction from the top down--does not give players confidence in the company. MH in all likelihood has fewer active, paying players than SWG did back then, and SWG was lucky it lasted with those numbers, and it never even came close to recouping what it lost. And now instead of details of near-future plans we're getting teases of potential updates in 2018, most if not all of which are unlikely to have had any work done on them at all as yet. God knows none of that work would be shared if it existed.
Much like the NGE, the BUE and its fallout will shape the future of MH going forward. The question, then, is whether MH will survive for another six years, and maybe--with enough hard work, marketing, returning player incentives, continuous apologies and an overdose of luck--recoup or surpass its player count or if it will wither and die before 2019 is even on the radar. Everything I've seen thus far points to the latter. I hope the dev team won't be downsized too much when the time comes, they shouldn't have to pay for the company's mistakes and lack of ability to learn from said mistakes.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the fallout from this month's events will be enough of a kick in the pants to affect real change. Either way, I'm not going to be around to see it. Might check in once in a while, but this'll probably be my last post.
TL;DR don't overhaul your game behind closed doors, don't make massive changes to announced features behind closed doors, don't make excuses for keeping important info behind closed doors, and open your damn doors more.
Edit: One more thing to note. In retrospect, it has been widely agreed that the worst aspect of the NGE was not the overhaul to the game itself, but the way it was sprung on players. A new expansion had just been released, people had preordered and bought the expansion and the game was moving on as-is until it was not. Out of nowhere, the NGE was announced and open to test. It had apparently been in development for months without players knowing about it at all, and was going live with very little (read: none) opportunity for feedback. Players were furious about the update itself, yes, but it was the complete lack of respect for the playerbase that was the true damaging force behind SWG's collapsing reputation. As mentioned, SOE quickly changed its direction and priorities in that regard, and the game soldiered on. MH's future is yet to be determined.
She and Jean were the reasons I even got into the game. Emma wasn’t a launch character but she was the 1 I wanted to play from the jump.
