Well.. so far, the best non-pvp sandbox ever made is SWG. Who made it? SOE. Who killed it? Also SOE.
So, can SOE be trusted? Absolutley not. Has anyone else made anything remotely as good as what SOE has? No.
So the answer is that NO, SOE can't be trusted. But relatively, they can probably be trusted more than any other major company out there. For PvP, i would definitely trust CCP more, but over all the years of making and improving EVE, they still haven't been able to prove to me that they can make a worthwhile PvE element. Not that EVE doesn't have PvE, but let's be honest, what makes EVE the amazing game is the PvP.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall Currently Playing: ESO
Originally posted by Leoghan They've made quality sandboxes, the problem was no one played them. Everyone decries what happened to SWG, but no one seems to admit to having jump ship before the drastic overhaul of the game. But the reality is too many people jumped ship and that's why the overhaul came.
Untrue sir. Many people jumped ship because there were other issues in the game present from launch. No one asked for the NGE. What "we" wanted was to address issues with the current game. The combat upgrade moved some of this in the right direction but the success of WoW was creating massive pressure to move the game toward a level based game even at the time of the combat upgrade.
Combat upgrade mechanics without the move toward level based theme park is the direction it should have gone. If the had held to entirely skill based without levels and fixed the massive amounts of bugs and tweaked their rewards for theme park quests (rage of the wookies) we would be having a very different conversation right now.
Which part is untrure that they made a quality sandbox with SWG or that no one stuck around to play it? If you're saying it was a good game, but needed some fixes then you're siding on the fact that it was an above average game. Why people jumped ship is actually moot, the reality is no one stuck around long enough and the Developers got desperate to compete with WoW, in hindsight that was an impossible goal, but in the heat of it, you can't really blame them.
What I'm saying is there was never an issue with too many people jumping ship. The overhaul came in response to WoW's overwhelming success. Sony & Lucas Arts wanted that success and began to redesign the game to be more like WoW. Hell, every game maker wanted the revenue Blizzard was seeing. No one even knew it was possible to hit those numbers.
That is why the NGE came. Not because the player base was leaving, but because WoW made them rethink what sub numbers were acceptable.
No subs were down substantially by Oct of 04 when JTLS was released. That was a month before WoW even came out, though granted a number of people had left to beta WoW. WoW came out in Nov of 04.
You can't say there was "never an issue of too many people jumping ship" and then say, they made changes in response to another games succes. The reality is that in their eyes the game was not producing the numbers it should have. Hell by the time the NGE hit in 05 most of the game was vacant, people weren't playing anymore. Rage of the Wookies had already been a huge disappiontment and Trials of Obi wan was shaping up to be one to. Then boom NGE hits two weeks later. Could they have kept it alive with the numbers they had? Yes, but they weren't thinking about keeping a game on life support at that point they wanted to breath new life into it. Huge mistake of course, but the number of subs were lower than what they expected and they responded.
The game was one of the best sandboxes ever released, but not enough people played it to keep it that way. Had the game been a huge success it never would have changed so dramatically. Even if it had only reached and sustained half of Wow's numbers I can bet you they wouldn't have changed things so much.
We will likely never see another game like it either because twice now one of the biggest IPs has failed to produced a soild hit.
Forgive me if someone already mentioned this but Free Realms is a sandbox, is it not? I know it's made for kids and I have not played it myself but we've seen recently how important a game's structure is over it's exterior. I would hope SoE is pouring it's combined knowledge and resources together since we're taking about the flagship IP.
Well.. so far, the best non-pvp sandbox ever made is SWG. Who made it? SOE. Who killed it? Also SOE.
So, can SOE be trusted? Absolutley not. Has anyone else made anything remotely as good as what SOE has? No.
So the answer is that NO, SOE can't be trusted. But relatively, they can probably be trusted more than any other major company out there. For PvP, i would definitely trust CCP more, but over all the years of making and improving EVE, they still haven't been able to prove to me that they can make a worthwhile PvE element. Not that EVE doesn't have PvE, but let's be honest, what makes EVE the amazing game is the PvP.
I agree with most of this.
I would also add, that aside from actually developing the games, SOE is very, very bad at managing an MMO well over the long term. And I am not talking about just SWG, basically everything not EQ2.
They leave exploits and bugs in game for extended periods without fixing them, and often the fixes are rebroken in subsequent updates. And have even lied about that some things ARE bugs or broken. "Working as intended." Remember that one?
When one of SOE's games gets too old, they just stick on maintence mode with 1 or 2 devs and basically do the minimum. That might as well be the company motto now: "SOE: We do the minimum."
SOE is just a poor MMO company now, if they were ever good.
SOE is always one step forward, one step backward to me. Honestly, I think they really want to do right by gamers for the most part. But it's the constant major screwups (SWG NGE, Vanguard, big security debacles, etc.) that sour people on SOE. If they kept their stuff in order for a few years without any major screwups, and released quality games during that time, there is no doubt in my mind they would "repair" their image quickly.
SWG NGE = no one knows how much SoE was involved. All signs point to mostly LA
Vanguard = SoE did nothing wrong here, they developed the game for 18 months while taking a loss, then got tired of taking a loss...what is the negative here?
Big security debacles = Trion and Blizzard have had security issues too. this is an industry wide issue
SoE has some negatives for sure, but some people want to hate them so bad they can't think logically.
I would also add, that aside from actually developing the games, SOE is very, very bad at managing an MMO well over the long term. And I am not talking about just SWG, basically everything not EQ2.
They leave exploits and bugs in game for extended periods without fixing them, and often the fixes are rebroken in subsequent updates. And have even lied about that some things ARE bugs or broken. "Working as intended." Remember that one?
When one of SOE's games gets too old, they just stick on maintence mode with 1 or 2 devs and basically do the minimum. That might as well be the company motto now: "SOE: We do the minimum."
SOE is just a poor MMO company now, if they were ever good.
You arent talking about EQ either.
Name a game with a sub base over 50k that SoE put in 'maintanence mode'? Heck even SWG got occasional updates.
When one of their games gets old? EQ is going on 14 years and still putting out expansions yearly. The EQ team obviously isnt as big as it once was but the game is far from neglected when you consider how many people play it.
I would also add, that aside from actually developing the games, SOE is very, very bad at managing an MMO well over the long term. And I am not talking about just SWG, basically everything not EQ2.
They leave exploits and bugs in game for extended periods without fixing them, and often the fixes are rebroken in subsequent updates. And have even lied about that some things ARE bugs or broken. "Working as intended." Remember that one?
When one of SOE's games gets too old, they just stick on maintence mode with 1 or 2 devs and basically do the minimum. That might as well be the company motto now: "SOE: We do the minimum."
SOE is just a poor MMO company now, if they were ever good.
You arent talking about EQ either.
Name a game with a sub base over 50k that SoE put in 'maintanence mode'? Heck even SWG got occasional updates.
When one of their games gets old? EQ is going on 14 years and still putting out expansions yearly. The EQ team obviously isnt as big as it once was but the game is far from neglected when you consider how many people play it.
Name a game that SOE HAS with over 50k paying subs.
EQ2, maybe but I doubt it. EQ1, no idea.
All the rest, is a bunch of F2P garbage and stuff on maint mode. Or SOE closed them.
MxO - closed and was on maint mode for years before
Vanguard - is was on maint mode for years with 1 dev.
SWG - was down to 2 devs before that got canned.
PoTBS - down to 2 servers, F2P
DCUO - $50 mil failure that went F2P in what? 7 Months?
And on and on... so what do they have that people still play, EQ and not much else, and even those games have been suffering under the poor F2P conversions... and just wait until that last round of subs people bought with discounted station cash runs out. Since they made that change, and I'd bet the EQ subs plummet as well.
I would also add, that aside from actually developing the games, SOE is very, very bad at managing an MMO well over the long term. And I am not talking about just SWG, basically everything not EQ2.
They leave exploits and bugs in game for extended periods without fixing them, and often the fixes are rebroken in subsequent updates. And have even lied about that some things ARE bugs or broken. "Working as intended." Remember that one?
When one of SOE's games gets too old, they just stick on maintence mode with 1 or 2 devs and basically do the minimum. That might as well be the company motto now: "SOE: We do the minimum."
SOE is just a poor MMO company now, if they were ever good.
You arent talking about EQ either.
Name a game with a sub base over 50k that SoE put in 'maintanence mode'? Heck even SWG got occasional updates.
When one of their games gets old? EQ is going on 14 years and still putting out expansions yearly. The EQ team obviously isnt as big as it once was but the game is far from neglected when you consider how many people play it.
Name a game that SOE HAS with over 50k paying subs.
EQ2, maybe but I doubt it. EQ1, no idea.
All the rest, is a bunch of F2P garbage and stuff on maint mode. Or SOE closed them.
MxO - closed and was on maint mode for years before
Vanguard - is was on maint mode for years with 1 dev.
SWG - was down to 2 devs before that got canned.
PoTBS - down to 2 servers, F2P
DCUO - $50 mil failure that went F2P in what? 7 Months?
And on and on... so what do they have that people still play, EQ and not much else, and even those games have been suffering under the poor F2P conversions... and just wait until that last round of subs people bought with discounted station cash runs out. Since they made that change, and I'd bet the EQ subs plummet as well.
How long is it going to take people, like yourself, to realize that there's NOTHING wrong with F2P. 99% of all games in the past, present, and future are going with the F2P model... Why? BECAUSE IT WORKS!
Don't even mention WoW and that it's not F2P... The game has enough subs to not even make blizzard care about their payment model... They're in cruise control mode right now and milking WoW for every thing it has left. all they need to do is release content patches every half year and an expansion every 3-4 years.
SOE is always one step forward, one step backward to me. Honestly, I think they really want to do right by gamers for the most part. But it's the constant major screwups (SWG NGE, Vanguard, big security debacles, etc.) that sour people on SOE. If they kept their stuff in order for a few years without any major screwups, and released quality games during that time, there is no doubt in my mind they would "repair" their image quickly.
SWG NGE = no one knows how much SoE was involved. All signs point to mostly LA
Vanguard = SoE did nothing wrong here, they developed the game for 18 months while taking a loss, then got tired of taking a loss...what is the negative here?
Big security debacles = Trion and Blizzard have had security issues too. this is an industry wide issue
SoE has some negatives for sure, but some people want to hate them so bad they can't think logically.
I would have to say you might technically correct on most counts here. I shouldn't say they are to blame for everything, but they are guilty by association. Just because they didn't cause all of the problems directly, it doesn't mean they can sit on the sidelines blameless. Not being part of the solution is almost as bad as being the problem itself. Some of these things should have been caught well before games hit the shelves.
As for the security problems, it may or may not be an issue for many game companies, but everyone doing something wrong isn't an excuse for you to do it wrong too.
That's about as logical as I'll try to get for one day.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
I'm personally hoping that EQ3 will be a revolutionary hybrid of sandbox/themepark taking the best of both and adding even more features, like the facial animation tech they were demoing with EQ2.
Why do I write, create, fantasize, dream and daydream about other worlds? Because I hate what humanity does with this one.
Given past history, I'd not trust SOE to pour water out of a boot, if the directions had been printed on the boots sole. ^^ The idea that they could create a decent "sand box" game (which tends to be more difficult than a theme park) doesn't even pass the snicker test.
I would also add, that aside from actually developing the games, SOE is very, very bad at managing an MMO well over the long term. And I am not talking about just SWG, basically everything not EQ2.
They leave exploits and bugs in game for extended periods without fixing them, and often the fixes are rebroken in subsequent updates. And have even lied about that some things ARE bugs or broken. "Working as intended." Remember that one?
When one of SOE's games gets too old, they just stick on maintence mode with 1 or 2 devs and basically do the minimum. That might as well be the company motto now: "SOE: We do the minimum."
SOE is just a poor MMO company now, if they were ever good.
You arent talking about EQ either.
Name a game with a sub base over 50k that SoE put in 'maintanence mode'? Heck even SWG got occasional updates.
When one of their games gets old? EQ is going on 14 years and still putting out expansions yearly. The EQ team obviously isnt as big as it once was but the game is far from neglected when you consider how many people play it.
Name a game that SOE HAS with over 50k paying subs.
EQ2, maybe but I doubt it. EQ1, no idea.
All the rest, is a bunch of F2P garbage and stuff on maint mode. Or SOE closed them.
MxO - closed and was on maint mode for years before
Vanguard - is was on maint mode for years with 1 dev.
SWG - was down to 2 devs before that got canned.
PoTBS - down to 2 servers, F2P
DCUO - $50 mil failure that went F2P in what? 7 Months?
And on and on... so what do they have that people still play, EQ and not much else, and even those games have been suffering under the poor F2P conversions... and just wait until that last round of subs people bought with discounted station cash runs out. Since they made that change, and I'd bet the EQ subs plummet as well.
People still play EQ and EQ2. They still develop for those games.
[mod edit] you said they put games into maintanence mode when they get old, I completely disproved that by mentioning EQ isnt in maintanence mode.
They only put games into maintenance mode when people stop playing them.
You tried to put down the company by saying they do the bare minimum, but you don't want to face the reality that they operated VG at a loss for 18 months while they fixed up Sigil's mess. Yeah, eventually they gave up...but can you blame them? Would you keep taking a loss?
So instead of admitting that you were wrong you just try to sidetrack things into unrelated arguments.[mod edit] you CAN focus on the fact that outside of Eq and EQ2 nobody plays their games. They havent released a noteable game in 8 years, but people that have been playing PS2 seem to signal that the drought is over.
And just to put things in perspective: during primetime all 10 of EQ2's NA servers hit medium pop. Only 5 of Rift's hit medum pop. (A few of those servers go over 1,000 players and I doubt any of EQ2s do though, so Rift does have a larger playerbase than EQ2...but its closer than most think)
SOE is always one step forward, one step backward to me. Honestly, I think they really want to do right by gamers for the most part. But it's the constant major screwups (SWG NGE, Vanguard, big security debacles, etc.) that sour people on SOE. If they kept their stuff in order for a few years without any major screwups, and released quality games during that time, there is no doubt in my mind they would "repair" their image quickly.
SWG NGE = no one knows how much SoE was involved. All signs point to mostly LA
Vanguard = SoE did nothing wrong here, they developed the game for 18 months while taking a loss, then got tired of taking a loss...what is the negative here?
Big security debacles = Trion and Blizzard have had security issues too. this is an industry wide issue
SoE has some negatives for sure, but some people want to hate them so bad they can't think logically.
I would have to say you might technically correct on most counts here. I shouldn't say they are to blame for everything, but they are guilty by association. Just because they didn't cause all of the problems directly, it doesn't mean they can sit on the sidelines blameless. Not being part of the solution is almost as bad as being the problem itself. Some of these things should have been caught well before games hit the shelves.
As for the security problems, it may or may not be an issue for many game companies, but everyone doing something wrong isn't an excuse for you to do it wrong too.
That's about as logical as I'll try to get for one day.
I don't think they are completely blameless either on the NGE and security points, Vanguard...they did more good than bad for that game, there are people that enjoy VG and VG never would have seen the light of day without SoE. About the only thing they really could have done is made VG f2p a lot sooner.
But neither thing is something you can really hold against SoE going forward. There is absolutely zero chance of a NGE ever happening again. And their security holes seem fixed, Im sure anonymous would have loved for them not to have been.
I do think the company has some terrible communication within its ranks, and I think this stems from the parent company. Sony is the bigger issue than SoE, and thats not something thats gonna go away.
I don't like how smokejumper handled EQ2 which is a big concern for EQNext
SoE games ALWAYS run like shit.
I would prefer for EQN a strict p2p model, which probably isnt going to happen
But I see no reason to trust their next product any less than any other company besides Anet or Trion.
Most people, including myself before today, forget about Free Realms. I had disregarded it as a B rate kids game but from what I've looked into there is a lot to the game and a lot of people playing.
I think it's easy to see that at the end of the day SoE has to run a business. They've had their hands in all sorts of game for different reasons with varied results. No other company can sport the same size of catalog outside made for F2P cookie cutter games. It's no surprise they would have a varied track record.
Comments
Well.. so far, the best non-pvp sandbox ever made is SWG. Who made it? SOE. Who killed it? Also SOE.
So, can SOE be trusted? Absolutley not. Has anyone else made anything remotely as good as what SOE has? No.
So the answer is that NO, SOE can't be trusted. But relatively, they can probably be trusted more than any other major company out there. For PvP, i would definitely trust CCP more, but over all the years of making and improving EVE, they still haven't been able to prove to me that they can make a worthwhile PvE element. Not that EVE doesn't have PvE, but let's be honest, what makes EVE the amazing game is the PvP.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
No subs were down substantially by Oct of 04 when JTLS was released. That was a month before WoW even came out, though granted a number of people had left to beta WoW. WoW came out in Nov of 04.
You can't say there was "never an issue of too many people jumping ship" and then say, they made changes in response to another games succes. The reality is that in their eyes the game was not producing the numbers it should have. Hell by the time the NGE hit in 05 most of the game was vacant, people weren't playing anymore. Rage of the Wookies had already been a huge disappiontment and Trials of Obi wan was shaping up to be one to. Then boom NGE hits two weeks later. Could they have kept it alive with the numbers they had? Yes, but they weren't thinking about keeping a game on life support at that point they wanted to breath new life into it. Huge mistake of course, but the number of subs were lower than what they expected and they responded.
The game was one of the best sandboxes ever released, but not enough people played it to keep it that way. Had the game been a huge success it never would have changed so dramatically. Even if it had only reached and sustained half of Wow's numbers I can bet you they wouldn't have changed things so much.
We will likely never see another game like it either because twice now one of the biggest IPs has failed to produced a soild hit.
I agree with most of this.
I would also add, that aside from actually developing the games, SOE is very, very bad at managing an MMO well over the long term. And I am not talking about just SWG, basically everything not EQ2.
They leave exploits and bugs in game for extended periods without fixing them, and often the fixes are rebroken in subsequent updates. And have even lied about that some things ARE bugs or broken. "Working as intended." Remember that one?
When one of SOE's games gets too old, they just stick on maintence mode with 1 or 2 devs and basically do the minimum. That might as well be the company motto now: "SOE: We do the minimum."
SOE is just a poor MMO company now, if they were ever good.
Please tell me you'll be around for the buildup and release for EQN.
Pure awesomeness I can already yell.
There is no accounting for taste.
What a silly OP. Can they be trusted? I don't understand....It's not like they would danger anything if they made it. There's nothing for us to lose.
Did you mean: Using your predjudice, do you think they will do a good job of making a sandbox?
-Meh, I dunno. No harm in them trying.
SWG NGE = no one knows how much SoE was involved. All signs point to mostly LA
Vanguard = SoE did nothing wrong here, they developed the game for 18 months while taking a loss, then got tired of taking a loss...what is the negative here?
Big security debacles = Trion and Blizzard have had security issues too. this is an industry wide issue
SoE has some negatives for sure, but some people want to hate them so bad they can't think logically.
You arent talking about EQ either.
Name a game with a sub base over 50k that SoE put in 'maintanence mode'? Heck even SWG got occasional updates.
When one of their games gets old? EQ is going on 14 years and still putting out expansions yearly. The EQ team obviously isnt as big as it once was but the game is far from neglected when you consider how many people play it.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
Name a game that SOE HAS with over 50k paying subs.
EQ2, maybe but I doubt it. EQ1, no idea.
All the rest, is a bunch of F2P garbage and stuff on maint mode. Or SOE closed them.
MxO - closed and was on maint mode for years before
Vanguard - is was on maint mode for years with 1 dev.
SWG - was down to 2 devs before that got canned.
PoTBS - down to 2 servers, F2P
DCUO - $50 mil failure that went F2P in what? 7 Months?
And on and on... so what do they have that people still play, EQ and not much else, and even those games have been suffering under the poor F2P conversions... and just wait until that last round of subs people bought with discounted station cash runs out. Since they made that change, and I'd bet the EQ subs plummet as well.
How long is it going to take people, like yourself, to realize that there's NOTHING wrong with F2P. 99% of all games in the past, present, and future are going with the F2P model... Why? BECAUSE IT WORKS!
Don't even mention WoW and that it's not F2P... The game has enough subs to not even make blizzard care about their payment model... They're in cruise control mode right now and milking WoW for every thing it has left. all they need to do is release content patches every half year and an expansion every 3-4 years.
I would have to say you might technically correct on most counts here. I shouldn't say they are to blame for everything, but they are guilty by association. Just because they didn't cause all of the problems directly, it doesn't mean they can sit on the sidelines blameless. Not being part of the solution is almost as bad as being the problem itself. Some of these things should have been caught well before games hit the shelves.
As for the security problems, it may or may not be an issue for many game companies, but everyone doing something wrong isn't an excuse for you to do it wrong too.
That's about as logical as I'll try to get for one day.
Enter a whole new realm of challenge and adventure.
I think any company that makes MMO's is capable of making a good sandbox.
Any company who is no stranger to MMO's has a higher chance of 'nailing it' than these small indie companies shooting for the bullseye.
just follow the formula..
Now im very intrigued to see what EQN turns out to be like,moreso than PS2.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
SOE did made a quality sandbox.
But to quote Charlie Wilson's War, they were glorious and they changed the world... and then they fucked up the end game.
People still play EQ and EQ2. They still develop for those games.
[mod edit] you said they put games into maintanence mode when they get old, I completely disproved that by mentioning EQ isnt in maintanence mode.
They only put games into maintenance mode when people stop playing them.
You tried to put down the company by saying they do the bare minimum, but you don't want to face the reality that they operated VG at a loss for 18 months while they fixed up Sigil's mess. Yeah, eventually they gave up...but can you blame them? Would you keep taking a loss?
So instead of admitting that you were wrong you just try to sidetrack things into unrelated arguments.[mod edit] you CAN focus on the fact that outside of Eq and EQ2 nobody plays their games. They havent released a noteable game in 8 years, but people that have been playing PS2 seem to signal that the drought is over.
And just to put things in perspective: during primetime all 10 of EQ2's NA servers hit medium pop. Only 5 of Rift's hit medum pop. (A few of those servers go over 1,000 players and I doubt any of EQ2s do though, so Rift does have a larger playerbase than EQ2...but its closer than most think)
I don't think they are completely blameless either on the NGE and security points, Vanguard...they did more good than bad for that game, there are people that enjoy VG and VG never would have seen the light of day without SoE. About the only thing they really could have done is made VG f2p a lot sooner.
But neither thing is something you can really hold against SoE going forward. There is absolutely zero chance of a NGE ever happening again. And their security holes seem fixed, Im sure anonymous would have loved for them not to have been.
I do think the company has some terrible communication within its ranks, and I think this stems from the parent company. Sony is the bigger issue than SoE, and thats not something thats gonna go away.
I don't like how smokejumper handled EQ2 which is a big concern for EQNext
SoE games ALWAYS run like shit.
I would prefer for EQN a strict p2p model, which probably isnt going to happen
But I see no reason to trust their next product any less than any other company besides Anet or Trion.
The very fact it is being talked about by a major mmo player (past, present and/or future) is a good thing.
My guess is Sony can only go up from where they are now and not down. Let us hope anyway.
You stay sassy!
I think it's easy to see that at the end of the day SoE has to run a business. They've had their hands in all sorts of game for different reasons with varied results. No other company can sport the same size of catalog outside made for F2P cookie cutter games. It's no surprise they would have a varied track record.