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Why SOE is ruining thier games
drackula2000
Member Posts: 2
You know i think i realised why SOE is the station cash and card games into thier MMOs. Sony as of last year was 1.xx billion dollars in debt (i just saw it but cant remember the exact figure. So it stands to reason that they need money and will take it from whoever they can get it from. Also who do you think pays for the PS3's free online? Not the people who bought them. So really it makes sense that Sony is doing these things... Let me know what you all think
Comments
I always thought it was an obvious case of WoW envy. They figure if they try enough times, they'll eventually manage to duplicate its success (and ability to print vast quantaties of money).
Unfortunately, they've done this without bothering to learn what made WoW a success, and then doing something to differentiate themselves.
Yup, you've hit the nail on the proverbial head.
SOE is absolutely allergic to putting out polished product.
CH, Jedi, Commando, Smuggler, BH, Scout, Doctor, Chef, BE...yeah, lots of SWG time invested.
Once a denizen of Ahazi
they just have horrible ideas. sure wizet makes tons of money from cash shop on maple story but their community is mostly kids and some teens. for SoE to make more money they need to do the right things for their games. somehow they ruin everything!
SOE is trying to make more money!? wow, what a shocking surprise! It's almost as if they are in this business to make a profit! gosh, and here was me thinking they were a charity organization!
SOE would have done this anyway, it doesn't matter if Sony is in debt or not. Microtransactions have proven to be quite successful and now SOE is trying to add both a monthly fee and an item mall.
I Agree. But asuming that the head chief of SOE does not undertand the market in which he is trying to succeed makes you wonder, how can this guy still have a job?
I wonder if by making an item mall sony will make ingame items even harder to loot of mobs?
They should leave the irem mall to the kiddies and leave the ingame item drops as is,or maybe even adjust them up some.
SOE is trying to make more money!? wow, what a shocking surprise! It's almost as if they are in this business to make a profit! gosh, and here was me thinking they were a charity organization!
SOE would have done this anyway, it doesn't matter if Sony is in debt or not. Microtransactions have proven to be quite successful and now SOE is trying to add both a monthly fee and an item mall.
I don't think anyone would have a problem with a company making money by building a better product. In the case of SoE I see them as more interested in greater profits through better business models rather then better games. That doesn't work for me as a consumer.
They might need the money, or they are greedy, but what is clear, is that they don't have the talent to make money with, so they just go the easy way, screwing thier games and part of their players.
You would think that by now SOE would have shaken up its management. With all the crap games they put out, all the deals they have to make to get subscribers and all the angry stuff written about them, you would think they would get their act together. But no...they just continue producing MMOs in hopes one will be a hit someday.
Microtransactions have proven to be quite successful and now SOE is trying to add both a monthly fee and an item mall.
Funny how all you geniuses who cry that you'll never play an game with a micro-transaction system, will continue glom onto SoE games.
SOE isnt the only ones ruining their games.... A decent percentage of that playerbase has been buying services from outside sources for years.......SOE is trying to get their share of that pie also....... SOE is a greedy company no doubt but the players have brought alot of this on also........ If there was no market then RMT would be worthless.
Yet there are companies out there who do just fine while still fighting RMT. SOE doesn't care about their players enough to fight it so they are willing to sacrifice a certain percentage of their current players in the hope that morons who spend hundreds of dollars a month in item malls will make it up.
The first sentence is the only answer there is to me they just plain have horrible ideas, sure they think they will work but in the end they just don't pan out from graphics on they just make bad looking buggy games as far as mmo's go and that comes from the top down.
After my original post I had a nice thought to add to my original statement. I consider myself to be a picky sort when it comes to my tastes and one rule I've seemed to follow subconsciously even is to make sure to differentiate between know how and actual talent, companies like funcom and soe have know how but a true talent? I think those two companies in particular suffered from what alot of companies these days suffer from being ran by pure dunder heads who lack an insight to wht gamers want.
In the case of funcom I can't be so certain that the problem isn't also technical as well as upper management, when you have so many of the same problems they had with AO you can't dimiss those things as chance. Maybe Gaute changes his mind so much they couldn't be expected to be able to handle it but the fact remains.
Now soe is a different story in that they just have let Smed ruin so many good things they have been associated with it's just crazy. Something should have told both LA and SOE there was a problem when the SW IP failed to pull in anymore than than the 300k or so it pulled in the game play was horrid from start to now from what I hear. Having the bugs and such tha game was always plagued with is one of the first and realest problems, alot of players have been spoiled by consoles and mmo's especially SOE better wise up and get it together it's one thing to ask these kinds of players to wait for downtimes once a week but when you have to go through the massive patching and server crashes this game had you aren't going to reach those masses. I didn't waste my money on Vanguard but it's obvious that game went through alot of the same ol with Smedley. Maybe if he was the great mind that brought us EQ1 he is certainly a one hit wonder and not fit to have such influence over the decisions of a company this size and with this potential.
but yeah, to call this game Fantastic is like calling Twilight the Godfather of vampire movies....
Yet there are companies out there who do just fine while still fighting RMT. SOE doesn't care about their players enough to fight it so they are willing to sacrifice a certain percentage of their current players in the hope that morons who spend hundreds of dollars a month in item malls will make it up.
see: turbine. they go to great lengths to hunt down and ban gold farmers. and the game shows it. players often make jokes about gold farmers in chat. because there arent any!
They rob you with every legal method they have access too, using every bit of the greyzone surround MMO at these days ..simple
Most customer however notice that and thats why the suck at attracting much people in that robbery
-----MY-TERMS-OF-USE--------------------------------------------------
$OE - eternal enemy of online gaming
-We finally WON !!!! 2011 $OE accepted that they have been fired 2005 by the playerbase and closed down ridiculous NGE !!
"There was suppression of speech and all kinds of things between disturbing and fascistic." Raph Koster (parted $OE)
Yet there are companies out there who do just fine while still fighting RMT. SOE doesn't care about their players enough to fight it so they are willing to sacrifice a certain percentage of their current players in the hope that morons who spend hundreds of dollars a month in item malls will make it up.
see: turbine. they go to great lengths to hunt down and ban gold farmers. and the game shows it. players often make jokes about gold farmers in chat. because there arent any!
This really goes to show how SOE treats its customers compared with how other mmorpg companies treat theirs. Companies like Turbine, Blizzard, CCP, etc realize that gold sellers annoy players, ruin in-game economies and generally degrade the gameplay for everybody else. SOE looked at gold sellers and their first thought wasn't the harm that was being done to their customers but the fact that they were being cut out of the profits so instead of trying to control the gold sellers they just became one. It's really sad that there are still people who defend SOE.
Not to defend, but selling gold can be 1 of the most effective ways to discourage gold sellers. That doesn't change the fact that it is a slimebag move.
To the initial question though, what is in their pipeline? Killing off several of their MMOs might make a ton of sense. IMO they count on "gamers amnesia" and believe everyone will be back if/when one of their games "gets it right" and starts building a crowd. BS aside, if they manage to build the best game on the market, I'd bet 70% of the "I hate SOE and will never play their games again" crowd would play it (around the 6 month mark). Fortunately for the "Haters", SOE is probably incapable of making a game so good that it becomes that "must play" sort of game.
Sure it will discourage third party gold sellers but having the developer itself selling gold could make the harmful effects on the players even worse. Third party gold sellers are somewhat limited in the amount of gold they can sell by what they can farm or grab from stolen accounts...the people running the game have no such restriction since they are creating the gold in the first place. All it takes is one or two retards willing to spend thousands of real dollars to completely screw up a game's economy.
It's just incompetence at every level of their organization, from the CEO, to game designers, to subpar artists, to bad marketing and consumber relations.
SOE is trying to make more money!? wow, what a shocking surprise! It's almost as if they are in this business to make a profit! gosh, and here was me thinking they were a charity organization!
SOE would have done this anyway, it doesn't matter if Sony is in debt or not. Microtransactions have proven to be quite successful and now SOE is trying to add both a monthly fee and an item mall.
I don't think anyone would have a problem with a company making money by building a better product. In the case of SoE I see them as more interested in greater profits through better business models rather then better games. That doesn't work for me as a consumer.
Exactly. SOE isn't just trying to make more money, they are taking more money from their customers without giving them a better product. It's a cheap move.
Tried: LotR, CoH, AoC, WAR, Jumpgate Classic
Played: SWG, Guild Wars, WoW
Playing: Eve Online, Counter-strike
Loved: Star Wars Galaxies
Waiting for: Earthrise, Guild Wars 2, anything sandbox.
SOE is trying to make more money!? wow, what a shocking surprise! It's almost as if they are in this business to make a profit! gosh, and here was me thinking they were a charity organization!
SOE would have done this anyway, it doesn't matter if Sony is in debt or not. Microtransactions have proven to be quite successful and now SOE is trying to add both a monthly fee and an item mall.
I don't think anyone would have a problem with a company making money by building a better product. In the case of SoE I see them as more interested in greater profits through better business models rather then better games. That doesn't work for me as a consumer.
agreed
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Yet there are companies out there who do just fine while still fighting RMT. SOE doesn't care about their players enough to fight it so they are willing to sacrifice a certain percentage of their current players in the hope that morons who spend hundreds of dollars a month in item malls will make it up.
see: turbine. they go to great lengths to hunt down and ban gold farmers. and the game shows it. players often make jokes about gold farmers in chat. because there arent any!
YOu must not be talking about loTRO...because when I played there was constant gold spam if you were in Bree......There was as much gold spam as in any game I had ever played.......
They could simply be doing market research, on the population of unsuccessful games. So the next one they release might have variations of the business model.
SOE = GM of the software world.....corporate greed ftw!
Not to defend, but selling gold can be 1 of the most effective ways to discourage gold sellers. That doesn't change the fact that it is a slimebag move.
To the initial question though, what is in their pipeline? Killing off several of their MMOs might make a ton of sense. IMO they count on "gamers amnesia" and believe everyone will be back if/when one of their games "gets it right" and starts building a crowd. BS aside, if they manage to build the best game on the market, I'd bet 70% of the "I hate SOE and will never play their games again" crowd would play it (around the 6 month mark). Fortunately for the "Haters", SOE is probably incapable of making a game so good that it becomes that "must play" sort of game.
I am convinced that SOE has all but given up on the current MMO market and has no intentions of trying to win back former subscribers to their new games or try to grow their current games. It is easier for them to target new demographics like tweens with free realms and so on.
Everything was stacked in SOEs favor with Everquest being king of the castle, loads of the best designers in the industry and plenty of IP to work with, yet things didn't turn out that way which is why we have topics like this one. At this point the damage to their brand and games has been done, nothing is going to undo it and turn them around.
Going forward is their only viable option. New games, new models, new demographics. People who haven't had lots of exposure to thier special brand of customer service in the past.