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Well okay, but the only game SOE ever screwed up was SWG right?
ArcAngel3
Member Posts: 2,931
Follow up thread to this one: The only thing SOE ever did wrong with this game was the NGE right?
I've come across the notion that SOE's reputation suffers largely from the negative feedback of disgruntled SWG players. It's as though players of this game are uniquely unreasonable, resentful, critical etc.. If this is the case then players of their other titles must be relatively happy. The basic idea is that SOE really makes good games and treats customers well, but a vocal minority of SWG players paints a very unrealistic picture of them. Is this true? I dunno, you tell me. SWG is the only SOE game I've ever played.
Have they been really different in their handling of games like Vanguard, EQ, EQII, Matrix online etc.? Are those players generally pleased with the way their games have been managed, and how they have been treated as customers? Feel free to comment on other titles, I just listed a few that came to mind.
Comments
-Matrix Online : They essentially bought the game, and then dropped ALL support for it essentially. They planned numerous "Entire Revamps" for the game, but only half assed it every...single...time. Eventually, they cut ALL major support and the game suffered into oblivion.
-EqII, they've been milking this since it failed to attract REAL popularity. Initially the game was supposed to have NOTHING to do with Everquest, but they changed the name & numerous art stages in order to connect back towards the EQ1 fanbase for more $$$ (developer interview is where this is from, post launch).
-Vanguard was simply saved from the graces of God due to a stupid Publisher who put to much expectations on his developement team, and set too many lofty goals. This is the ONLY title SOE actually saved from destruction.
-EQ, essentially this game has been SOE's flagship for more than 10years now. It is because of EQ that they are now the MMO mainstream giant (however undeserved they may be) in today's MMO world. Unfortunately though, the game has suffered from a MASSIVE lack of vision from the development team, and has been slapped around with so many gimic filled expansions it has bastardized the game into near-exstinction. Despite this, hardcore fans who keep being let down by newer iterations of the Modern MMO continue to come back to this bastion of what it MEANS to play a D&D-ish MMO.
-There are MANY other games they support now, but most are almost as bad as Matrix, or are going by that path.
The Theory of Conservative Conservation of Ignorant Stupidity:
Having a different opinion must mean you're a troll.
Vanguard is their diamond in the rough but for some unknown reason they totally ignore it. EQ was there flag ship which they also left drifting on the high sea. The rest of there lineup is meh as far as I'm concerned.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
SOE listens to the gripes of players. That's the downfall as they make the games easier and easier. Take EQ2. started great but now...Instant ports..gear driven everything. End game content is only about DPS and your gear. A guild of monkeys could pull off a raid. There is no personality in SOE games. Play like a pc action adventure game for a console. Sad. Great ideas that usually end in the toilet. EQ 1 my favorite MMO of all the times..ahhh hey SOE remember those citys that gave life to EQ. Freeport ? Qeynos...Neriak ? yeah we know..You don;'t remember those places. And SWG. or maybe it should be retitles SWoJ < Star Wars of Jedi>..SOE is just about $$. They would screw up 1+1
Jymm Byuu
Playing : Blood Bowl. Waiting for 2. Holding breath for Archeage and EQN.
Vanguard did get saved by SOE when the Microsoft publishing deal fell through, but they also probably killed that title by pushing it too soon.
Vanguard was one of the most hyped, and worst MMO launches of all time. It was on-par with FFXIV's launch, it was that bad. It took about a year, maybe a bit more, before the game actually becaome playable and enjoyable. The Vanguard you see today is nothing like the Vanguard that launched. Honestly, I am surprised it's still around today and they were able to salvage anything out of it at all. It really feels like SOE just pushed it out the door to compete with the Burning Crusade WoW expansion and to beat the hype that was building around LoTRO.
The Everquest Luclin expansion: It basically brought down all the servers for about a week and was unplayable (with no free time voucher or anything other than "Oops"). This was the expansion that upgraded Everquest to DirectX, and it needed emergency patch after emergency patch. A good bit of the expansion wasn't even released until just before the next expansion (the Bazaar, the end-raid zone Vex Thal). It was also the first expansion done without the Verant name.
Planes of Power Everquest expansion: They purposely broke raid content (Rathe Council) and made it unbeatable because they didn't have the end zone (plane of time) ready, while not admitting to it. Many guilds sat staring at this broken content for a while before it was "fixed" and the last raid zone ready for use. This was on top of a very lengthy and complicated flagging system to even get your guild ready for the later raiding zones.
In the early EQ days, it was published by SOE, but run by Verant (who was owned by SoE, but operated more or less independently). Once SoE decided to kill off the Verant name/operations and fold them into everyday SOE operations, the customer service dropped like a rock. EQ used to have a dedicated GM or two for every server, a talented and extensive volunteer Guide system, and it basically went to a knowledge base with a crappy web lookup and a call center out of India overnight. The quality of the lore and expansions has been debatable (many still consider the Verant expansions to be the pinnacle of the game).
Matrix Online & EQ2, yeah, what he said above.
I do have to admit, I like the Station Pass, although I think it's a bit pricey now that some of the games it gives access to have went F2P.
Ask this on the Planetside forums...
Agreed. But I will just mention that what Planetside was and even promised to be in beta was drastically changed once it was released. And not particularly for the better.
Let's party like it is 1863!
SOE have made some really high changes
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Online_Entertainment
On March 13, 2008, Sony Online Entertainment announced that Sony Computer Entertainment will have direct control over SOE.
So since SCE has a direct control over SOE now adays i think we may see some real quality products from them in the future.
Im not judging SOE for anything i know they did some misstakes but doesn't everyone make misstakes? and shouldn't people have a forgiving side? Everyone deservs second. third. furth chances.
No Signature
I've actually been seeing the opposite since this change. All decisions the past couple years seem to come from a management that doesn't even play the game. The developers themselves that play the game have less control than they ever have.
I've watched the changes to EQ2 since this shift in control. It's not been positive.
That's 3 years ago lol. Any "change" would have happened by now.
I doubt that SWG is the only game, I would rather say that 80 % of their games been screwed up.
It may be interesting to see how the new EQ progression server (launching next week) proceeds. After a grace period, the players will have to vote on opening the next expansion: 1 vote per account, only accounts with characters on Fippy Darkpaw and above a certain level get to vote.
Anything SOE creates eventually turns to garbage or is neglected. It was not just fact that SOE took one of the best sandbox games ever made and destroyed it. They neglected Planetside. The neglected Vangaurd. The changes made to EQ2 soon after launch drove me away. They sell unfinished expansions. They sell expansion and do not tell players they are not compatible with the current game(the pulled the NGE and sold an expansion to players despite knowing that the expansion was not compatible). No thank you. I am done giving that company money.
lol to you too. Changes takes time. and especially when Devlopment of MMOS is 4-5 years. So do the math yourself of whats been released that started devlop afterwards. as far as i know its only EQ next. that i whould call a "Real MMORPG" Clone wars and free realms is more of an casual MMOG
No Signature
I was an old SWG veteran. And I remember fondly the great times I had with friends. But when they came through the the Combat Up(down)grade, that was like putting the second to last nail in the coffin. Somewhere along the way, the vocal minority had gained the upper hand. Ruestess had become the norm and it was as if the PvP kiddies controlled the game. Now I'm not saying this was the primary reason. But I have a strong suspicion it was the start of the downfall. The day the NGE came out, I took one look at the game and just....wanted to scream. They had taken the greatest sandbox MMO and destroyed it in one night. Not telling anyone. As Taelsa said.
Everquest? This was the start of my MMORPG career. Was it tough? Yes. And I wasn't fond of the grind. But I still loved my iksar Shadowknight with nearly a 60% leveling gimp. Gotta love those penalties. But with all the expansions after Planes of Power? If you weren't catching up, you weren't getting anywhere and would be left behind.
Everquest 2. Fun for a while. Then....phhtttthhhtttttt.
Planetside. What the hell? How could they ruin and leave such a great game to die?
Sony Online Entertainment has made some very very poor choices in regards to their games. I have to say the old saying is true that: "Money talks and BS walks."
Unless you can pony up the cash to get Sony's ear, then we'll have to take what they give us and either take it or leave it. My fear is that DCUO will go the same way as the others have. They will make all these big promises and then maybe a year down the line start to neglect the game.
It was rather funny after the NGE how all the EQ2 fanbois began foaming at the mouth with the animosity that the mmo community started holding towards SOE. Then, on the EQ2 forums, there was a heated debate which degenerated into some nastiness, things like "Smed did this to us, you're next"... that were later proven true as Smed and Co went to town on their game as well.
SOE doesn't know anything apart from the fact that they want the money that Blizzard makes. There is no depth to which they will sink to to attain that goal, except make a good game and treat their customers with some semblance of respect and gratitude. A number of years ago there was a very hot IP that was about to come out on the scene. The movies and tie-in marketing all did very very well so the game was expected to be a blockbuster. Plus, the writers of the movies would be involved not just with development of the game but as part of the long term as the game was supposed to be the continuation of their story line. This IP, The Matrix. Owned by Warner Brothers, the Matrix was part of another much larger IP: DC Comics.
City of Heroes came out and has sat with middling success numbers that are apparently still larger than SOE's offerings through their Station. Microsoft was sitting on the Marvel license with a number of false starts on the Marvel MMO and SOE was getting nervous. World of Warcraft was taking over the genre and SOE was becoming more and more irrelevent.
Around this time the Matrix Online began floundering, not that it was ever successful. A decent game that never received the full support that was promised, the live events never living up to their promise, the whole game just not playing very well and not entirely fun, but had a strong core group of players. I think it was cruising along with some 30 or 40 thousand players maybe, not huge by any account, but respectable for the time. Suddenly there is a lot of murmuring throughout the MXo community, that htey are about to get shut down or sold off. SOE issues a press release about their love for Matrix, and how they are going to turn the game around and make it the game it was supposed to be. Two weeks later, maybe 3, DCUO was announced, within 6 months MXO was shuttered, no refunds to anyone moronic enough to have paid sub fees in advance but you were welcome to play other SOE tripe.
If you think for one minute that SOE will not steal your puppy and rape the desicated corpse of your great great great great grandfather for a penny you are deluding yourself and avoiding the past.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/7300033012
QFT -- I was one of the vets burned by the NGE. I played a bit after, but just couldn't do it anymore after seeing all my friends leave. I am now playing their other red-headed stepchild Vanguard. While I know they are in business to make money, these days it seems every decision they make is only motivated by how more they can squeeze out of people.
Oh, so only games like DCUO that were developed over the last 5 years qualify? That's well over half the development time that SCE has had input...3 years + $50 million on the project is surely enough for them to step in right?!
EQ Next wasn't "developed" either, it was transitioned...and at the expense of all the current EQ2 paying customers I might add.
If you look at it from a sociopathic point of view, a lot of their decisions make perfect sense. Vanguard floundered for a long time. After a year of messing with it, they decided it was never going to shine, so they stopped paying development for it. It's still there with nothing done to it after all this time, and there are still people paying for it. Seems like you could say the same about the EQ titles. After a certain point, you spend so little on the projects that any money you bring in is profit. The Matrix was the only one that couldn't fit into this business plan. It's like the other side of Cryptic's business plan. Cryptic underdevelops, releases and then builds up to almost a complete game. SoE gets a mostly complete game, then just coasts along until the game dies.
I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.
Regarding using "bugs" to gate content, SWG players made similar allegations. One guy's guild spent forever and a day looking for a contact in a quest line. He claims that support told him to "keep looking." Later, the name of the contact was changed, and he found a guy in a location he had already checked. He was finally able to continue. SWG had a number of "broken" quest lines as I remember. Many people wondered if they were "broken" because they were incomplete. It would have been nice if they just said, "we're working on finishing that quest line for you, look for it in an upcoming patch." Not sure why that approach was overlooked tbh.
When Jabba's palace mysteriously disappeared to prepare for the as yet unannounced NGE, we were under the impression it was a "bug" they were "looking into." Later we found out that Jabba's palace was turned into the site of the much-hated, broken, and boring "legacy quest." The new content designed to help NGE players level up.
I didn't know EQ players had similar experiences, thanks for enlightening me.
When I started seeing strange things happen to SWG, I checked out the Matrix online. I'm a huge fan of the film. I read the forums and players were screaming about some kind of combat revamp. I thought twice about the game in light of that. Then, I heard it closed down essentially from neglect. That doesn't seem like a well-managed game with happy fans to me tbh.
With Vanguard I read in the wiki that it was SOE who pushed the early release date, although the devs said the thing was far from launch ready. Then when it tanked, of course, SOE offered to generously buy the game outright. I dunno if that's "saving" it, or some kind of hostile takeover. Made me scratch my head. Then I saw on their forums that people were screaming for classic servers because of unwanted revamps. I never experienced any of this first hand, just read about it on forums and in the wiki.
I read something about EQII players feeling lied to when SOE introduced RMT. Apparently Smed told them that he was personally against this, and that there were no plans to add RMT. Did this happen before or after the merge with SCE?
They sold an expansion that was not compatible with the original game? What do you mean?
I think that SOE is just another company, no better no worse. They screwed up on SWG, but how much of that was SOE and how much was LucasArts still isn't clear to me.
I didn't like how they dummied EQ and EQ2 up, but that was more out of a misplaced sense of the customer knowing best (in MMORPGs, that is almost never the case).
Matrix Online was a piece of crap. When they got it it was garbage and when it died the fans should have thanked SOE for fishing that thing out of the trash and letting them have a more drawn out goodbye. Vanguard was never rushed out the door by SOE, they were only distrbuting it. Sigil rushed it out due to the fact they were broke. Only after launch did SOE outright buy Vanguard. It would have been wonderful if they had done something with it, but they chose to spend their investment money somewhere else.
Is SOE a great company? Probably not, are they any worse than Blizzard or EA/Bioware? Probably not. Most of this endless SOE hate comes from hurt feelings and fond memoeries for a game that died 5 yrs ago. I find little of the conspiracy SOE hate based in reality.
Is it "change" we could believe in?
I dunno Hayes, when I read your comments, and compare them to the experiences of most of the other respondents, I see a big difference. As for Vanguard, SOE was the publisher, and it appears they set the release date, even though the development house needed about 3 more months for a successful launch. Here's a quote to that effect:
"The game was released before it was ready, leading to:
Content was low for high-level players, and spotty even in some lower-level areas. Much planned high level content was not included at launch.
Large numbers of bugs and performance issues, which make gameplay difficult, and on some systems rendering the game virtually unplayable.
At release, performance was poor on many systems, including some high-end configurations. For example there was no anti-aliasing, and anisotropic filtering support was buggy.
In April 2007 Brad McQuaid, CEO of Sigil Games Online, addressed these issues and provided some explanations:
'Had I had the financial resources, ability to place the product later, etc. I would have given us about 3 more months to get more polish in, more high level content in, and to distance ourselves from the WoW expansion.'"
From this source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguard:_Saga_of_Heroes
One of the big complaints about SWG has always been the early release with serious bugs, issues and missing content. Judging from the quote above, it seems that SWG isn't the only SOE game that had these issues. Suggesting that SWG is unique, and the only source of player frustration seems simply incorrect.
From what I'm reading, it also seems incorrect to suggest that NGE (5 years ago) is the only thing that got under players' skin in SWG. A lot of people seem to be saying that they felt repeatedly burned by a company that rushed out buggy content, didn't listen to player feedback, didn't do what they said they were going to, and gave them all sorts of nasty surprises.
As for comparison's with Blizzard, I can't help thinking of the way they listened to player feedback and cancelled proposed changes to their forums. If SOE had listened that well to player feedback about numerous changes to SWG (Combat Upgrade and NGE to name just two) I believe they might be just as successful as the competition. Unfortunately, it seems they didn't listen, and their popularity plummetted as a result.
Smed himself commented in an interview that SOE committed a cardinal sin when they didn't listen to their players. I have yet to read Blizzard's CEO make a statement like that. I also have yet to see a mass player exodus from WoW. Blizz seems to do at least two things that SOE seems to struggle with: 1) put out an abundance of highly polished content, 2) respond favourably to player feedback, even if it means changing their plans for the game or service.