See, you can just pull randomly one of his comments and nearly always find something outstanding:

There’s an update coming, but otherwise, yea, everything I’ve read points to the same stuff: this is not your father’s SWG.

They’re expanding it by integrating the content it seems everyone wants: combat and quests in environments designed to maximize both. Not sure of how much you’ve seen of Kashyyyk, but the planet is basically designed more like a WoW zone than the other planets. It’s a nice attempt to funnel players into encounters, but it’s at complete odds with the openness of the rest of the game.

They’ve changed a lot of stuff. The current players seem ok with it, though I don’t see SOE posting subscription numbers like they used too, falling back on the largest number they’ve got left: the total number of active subscriptions across all of their games (800k+).

It’s a shame though, but I guess expected. Like OSI before them they just got too comfortable with what has become outmoded thinking. They delivered games for the previous generation of players, rather than understanding how to grow beyond that niche core.

They still don’t quite get it, or maybe they just can’t really retrofit WoW thinking over games not designed for it. Whatever the case is, I largely consider them irrelevant now. Not because of Blizzard/VU, but really because of the sheer number of titles out now. There’s just too many games to really suffer through the bug riddled incomplete patchwork of autonomous conflicting features that is current SWG (or current EQ1… not sure about EQ2 nor really care).

I’m honestly surprised at myself in my lack of interest in returning. I’ve effectively lost all faith in SOE as a company able to provide me fun experiences. Their recent acquisitions of MxO and Toontown point to the things they’re more interested in: buying other’s innovations because that’s cheaper than innovating oneself.

Unfortunately, that thinking has gotten many companies in trouble in the past because of something failed and was therefore cheap to by, unless you spend the time fixing it, all you end up doing is continuing the failure. It now just costs you the money.

But beside this, I’m just completely in love with his maps. I really do hope that he decides to write down how he was able to create them, because if I can learn that I’ll just stop to play these games the way I do now and just create maps.

I’m that type of geek. I love that stuff and I’m jealous of what he can do. I want. (also his writing skills)

Late edit – He added another nice stab:

Is EQ1 even relevant anymore? Worse, with the buggy long criticized experience that is Star Wars Galaxies, the obviously not-so-wildly-beloved Everquest 2 and the never-really-played Planetside, is SOE even relevant? Most of their action in the last year has been about business decisions. The publishing of Asherons Call expansions, the absorption of The Matrix Online and Toontown, their relationship with Massive Entertainment. Meanwhile, their games suffer for long-standing apparently backwards-looking game philosophies.

This is a tricky time for the former giant of the genre (I can’t say “darling” because, well, they weren’t really perceived as such). While their portfolio has grown, none of it has been because of any creativity shown in the games. On the one hand, creative and innovative game design can only get you so far. On the other, unless you have creative and innovative games, whatever business decisions got you to that point won’t allow back continued growth.

So I hope to see a new title announcement from SOE soon. I’d almost go so far as to say they need to. How much more money do they have to be able to continually build their Station Pass system through acquisition?