A typical day for me includes handling my business and working in my Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes daily tasks in while monitoring my Guild’s chat to ensure nothing crazy is going on. Yesterday, while taking care of my day’s business, something of note indeed took place. A group referred to as The Alliance issued their “State of the Galaxy” for SWGoH which caused all kinds of discussion on the forums and in chat rooms on Line and Discord. While I am not going to get into all of the details of the document they published on Reddit (click the link for more), I will say that the key point is that SWGoH has become stale and needs new content, not just new characters.
While their point on content is indeed a wide-spread opinion if you read through the forums, the way this statement was released was a point of conversation. I will leave the details on opinions on how all of this came about up to the fans to determine how they feel about all of it.
With all of this going on I did a little research to find out more about The Alliance and their leadership as well as look into the others who were involved in the similar document. I was able to get in contact with Lukas of The Alliance (TA) and ask him a few questions. Below are the notes from that conversation.
First off, I asked about The Alliance since I was not entirely familiar with the group. Per Lukas, “currently there are 54 TA guilds. TA is represented by the senate. Every Guild has 2 senators.” Because I knew there was a connection to a previous alliance of Guilds, I followed this with “Since not everyone knows the history, what is the relation of The Alliance to previous allied Guilds with Lord Skunk, Team Instinct, etc?” Lukas replied, “TA was formed after a vast group of players/guilds including most of the leadership of TS (Team Skunk) at that time decided that future cooperation with lordskunk will not be possible.”
I followed up by asking “where did this letter and the need to write it originate?” To that, Lukas replied, “the decision to make a draft that was eventually passed was growing for some time now. Probably 6 weeks or more.”
Because players quitting the game is at the heart of all of this, I asked Lukas “how many players do you estimate have quit in the past few months as a result of the “stagnation” of SWGoH?” His response was, “More then we like to see go. My guild over the period of a little over a month lost 3 excellent players, many more are considering leaving, discussion on such topics are on daily basis.”
One question that I saw others asking in chat was “What would you say would be a best-case scenario from the publicizing of this letter?” Lukas replied, “That the current policy of CG/EA regarding communication and interaction with the fan base will be completely reworked. The goal of such a change would be to ensure that the community that has emerged around SWGOH will be well informed about the short and medium term future of the game. The current policy of saying little to nothing in our opinion is causing to much frustration and uncertainty.”
During the discussion, I received a PM from a trusted contact asking “why did they not join the other leaders in their letter?” The response from Lukas was, “As for joining the letter – We did, in a organized fashion. As for The Resistance channel we are in contact on daily basis and we coordinate our efforts. We are a part of it. Furthermore the letter that has been published on MSWGOH great again was based or influenced by a very early draft that was presented there by TA. It has been reworked to be more appropriate for a wider group of guilds. The same original draft was later on updated, polished and eventually passed by a vote in the senate.”
Finally, on the topic of the timing of the letter and rumors that said that they “cut in line” so to speak on this letter to claim fame from The Alliance, Lukas responded that these rumors “were debunked by people actually involved” and that “we don’t want to allow a soap opera to unfold over some comments, that’s why we debunked them right away.”
The discussion continued, off the record, where we discussed many things related to this game. What I can tell you is that the direct approach of this letter is, per Lukas and TA, due to the fact that “all other channels of communication failed to bring meaningful change.”
More on this topic should be coming this weekend as Jolly Roger from the SWGoH Alliance Leads chat will be discussing the letter and its timing as well.
By LJ, Director of Content
Gaming-fans.com
The next logical step would be to boycott all purchases until the situation is addressed. Complete boycott from all members of affiliated guilds, and support from guilds who wish to see the issue addressed. Leaving is “permanent”, whereas a protest movement may bring about movement, given that the economic portion of the equation is only temporarily removed, leaving the possibility of a resolution that satisfies all involved.
Boycotts have been tried before and didn’t work. Last time, it was in protest of the cost involved in buying Krennic/Deathtrooper – around $1100 for 7*.
There were also calls for a boycott over a year ago, when mod drop rates were nerfed (among other changes).
Neither time made a difference. Characters are still being released with a ridiculously inflated cost. Mod drops weren’t increased until recently, a year after they were reduced.
In part, this is because the people who could make a difference, the krakens and mega whales, still spent. The same thing would happen this time, as soon as a new character is released.