SOE lost their passion for creating games shortly after they purchased Verant.
Soon after that they forced Brad McQuaid out and the EQ expansion release dates were ramped up and the content took a serious nose dive. The first "SOE" only expansion sent players to the freaking moon to play with cat people.
They did the same thing with Raph Koster and SWG and also with Planetside.
Around 2001/2002 SOE making games became secondary concern for SOE and making revenue streams and release dates become top priority.
To put it shortly, SOE died in its own success. EQ was so successful, but SOE never truely understood that its success came from the passion of the people who made it, not from cranking out as many expansions, micro transactions and /pizza as they could cram into a financial quarter.
That is why no single SOE game has ever sustained even half of the success that the original everquest had. I would be that EQ has single handedly outperformed every other SOE total combined.
SOE simpy has no passion left and that is why they turn out crap or ruin whatever they get involved in.
Everquest was developed under Sony. They didn't purchase it. Look at this page:
What happened was that 989 Studios developed EQ under Sony, then the EQ team broke off from 989 to form the independent studio Verant, AFTER the game has already been released.
EQ and FFXI are long term, 'grindy' games. WoW, being the elephant in the room, will receive credit for turning the MMO genre into an instant gratification genre from a grind driven genre. There's both good and bad effects from this so hate/love it all you want.
Also note, WoW's 'phenomenon' is just that. Remember, they didn't steal every MMO player, they brought in droves and droves of 'casuals' and the newer to life players(read: youngins). This was a complete game changers.
After the genre was flooded with millions of brand new players, the old companies like SOE and SE still had what they used to have but what they used to have isn't what is wanted anymore. They didn't have the 'new' that they needed to adapt to this flood of new players with unique/differing/instant gratification originated opinions.
SOE and SE are the same as what they used to be... and that's the problem. You can't successfully exist in an ever changing world without changing yourself.
Now, you, I and our fellow forum posters will mostly agree about some degree of discontent with the current state of the industry but we're no longer in the majority. Sure, when we're talking about 200-500k subs being a huge success we were perfectly good spokesmen and women but now that where in an era of 12mill subs, we're but a fart in the wind to devs. =/
P.S. about WoW: I find it funny how it's 'instant gratification' and the easy of leveling to max level is one of the main appealing things to all the new players it brought when it's just as, if not more, grindy that these other games. They just did a really good job of hiding all the grind in endgame. When talking about WoW with my "WoW buddy" I'm always making fun of them having over 11 tiers of endgame armor which he'll laugh about and then remark that there's more, just different kinds. If that's not grind...
We really need separate forums for every newly launched game. There can be the anti-<MMO> one and there can be the 'what general discussion should be' one. All the lamenting can happen together where each can find solace in like minded can't-move-on-ers leaving the rest of us to actually move forward and discuss meaningful and relevant topics.
SOE lost their passion for creating games shortly after they purchased Verant.
Soon after that they forced Brad McQuaid out and the EQ expansion release dates were ramped up and the content took a serious nose dive. The first "SOE" only expansion sent players to the freaking moon to play with cat people.
They did the same thing with Raph Koster and SWG and also with Planetside.
Around 2001/2002 SOE making games became secondary concern for SOE and making revenue streams and release dates become top priority.
To put it shortly, SOE died in its own success. EQ was so successful, but SOE never truely understood that its success came from the passion of the people who made it, not from cranking out as many expansions, micro transactions and /pizza as they could cram into a financial quarter.
That is why no single SOE game has ever sustained even half of the success that the original everquest had. I would be that EQ has single handedly outperformed every other SOE total combined.
SOE simpy has no passion left and that is why they turn out crap or ruin whatever they get involved in.
Everquest was developed under Sony. They didn't purchase it. Look at this page:
What happened was that 989 Studios developed EQ under Sony, then the EQ team broke off from 989 to form the independent studio Verant, AFTER the game has already been released.
I know that Verant was funded and part of Sony, but Everquest was not developed by Sony Online Entertainment. The culture and priorities of the two development studios are different enough that it is well worth pointing out.
I don't even think you will see SOE as a company on any EQ box art until Shadow of Luclin.
Square did all their best stuff with FFVI and Chronotrigger. After that it turned into interactive anime. They've been rehashing the same boring story since they started, and they even manage to continue to use all the same character personalities. Their recent games lack... charm? I don't think they'll release another numbered Final Fantasy that I will buy.
Ah yes, Chronotrigger, how could I forget, and Secret of Mana as well!
Looking back at it, with a Secret of Mana, FF6 and FF7, Parasite Eve, Chronotrigger, Secret of Mana and Vagrant Story, it looks like their glory years peaked in the '90s and first half of the 2000-2010 decennium.
Maybe things went downhill when they lost a lot of money and prestige with the bombing of the Final Fantasy movie
Although personally I didn't find it a bad movie at all, its visuals were outstanding and it had a great atmosphere, only the storyline might not be easy to stomach for people who aren't into scifi or the Japanese take on science fiction and scifi storylines.
Originally posted by Daffid011
I don't even think you will see SOE as a company on any EQ box art until Shadow of Luclin.
EQ up to Scars of Velious was a masterpiece, imo. Too bad it went downhill after that.
Maybe there's a limit to original ideas that you can keep generating, after which designers fall for the easy 'level cap raise, new level cap content and upgraded gear' trap for expansions.
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums: Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
Even Blizzard can be found guilty of losing their touch as of late, StarCraft 2 is far from stellar, Diablo 3 seems to be suffering from the same problem, 7 years tworking on a game and it looks like more of the (now) same old same old, barely no improvements...
Just because you don't like blizzard doesn't mean their games aren't great. Star Craft 2 is a great game, just like Warcraft 3 was a great game to Warcraft 2. Diablo 3 also looks like a great game, I spent endless hours on Diablo 2 and am glad they didn't significantly change the style/gameplay. Obviously only time will tell what the exact game will be like, but I personally have high hopes. The open source blizzard uses for their RTS games also spurred the DOTA era, and countless tower defences. I still play tower defences on warcraft 3 (although i'm hoping eventually they are improved on starcraft 2). WoW was a great game also (i played my fair share), i'll never loook back on my WoW experience and not think the game was great. There is a reason why it became a behemoth.
WoW's latest expansion has made both players and developers realize that WoW is, in fact, dying...albeit slooooowly
The game's been out for 6+ years, it's about time the subscriptions are "dying" how long can anyone possibly play an mmo for? Aren't they still like the only mmo that had increased subscriptions after launch instead of decreasing?
Only ArenaNet seems to be outside this downward spiral of mediocrity...and let me stress "seems", time will tell...
right.. they've released what? 1 game? guild wars 1? lol?
IMHO we just passed a 5 years long bonanza where developers though they could release any half assed product and people would rush to buy it because it was an "em em oh".
For mmo's i'd agree, there have still be countless amounts of (other genre) good games that were produced.
SOE lost their passion for creating games shortly after they purchased Verant.
Soon after that they forced Brad McQuaid out and the EQ expansion release dates were ramped up and the content took a serious nose dive. The first "SOE" only expansion sent players to the freaking moon to play with cat people.
They did the same thing with Raph Koster and SWG and also with Planetside.
Around 2001/2002 SOE making games became secondary concern for SOE and making revenue streams and release dates become top priority.
To put it shortly, SOE died in its own success. EQ was so successful, but SOE never truely understood that its success came from the passion of the people who made it, not from cranking out as many expansions, micro transactions and /pizza as they could cram into a financial quarter.
That is why no single SOE game has ever sustained even half of the success that the original everquest had. I would be that EQ has single handedly outperformed every other SOE total combined.
SOE simpy has no passion left and that is why they turn out crap or ruin whatever they get involved in.
Everquest was developed under Sony. They didn't purchase it. Look at this page:
What happened was that 989 Studios developed EQ under Sony, then the EQ team broke off from 989 to form the independent studio Verant, AFTER the game has already been released.
I know that Verant was funded and part of Sony, but Everquest was not developed by Sony Online Entertainment. The culture and priorities of the two development studios are different enough that it is well worth pointing out.
I don't even think you will see SOE as a company on any EQ box art until Shadow of Luclin.
So you're basically arguing that once Sony decided to start calling their MMORPG division SOE, they went downhill? I don't really know if I buy this.
SOE is just a part of Sony. Also, spell "Qeynos" backwards, then tell me Sony didn't have much to do with EQ.
They lost their touch when they lost focus of the customers in their products and started believing they could do whatever they wanted to in their games "because we're Sony" or "because we're SE".
Until they get off their high horses and realize that with the level of competition out there they cannot launch games in the same condition or format as they used to years ago or if they don't listen to their customers their newer games will fade quickly. It is amazing how awful SoE has done lately with their mmos and how SE completely dropped the ball on their mmo which should have become one of the bigger games over the last few years.
If I was an investor in either of these companies I would be beyond pissed at how badly things have been managed by these organizations. The writing has been on the wall for some time and both of these companies simply refuse to read it.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
At the time, it felt amazing and had something unique that managed to touch me more than a lot of other games.
After that I played the former Final Fantasy games like FF6 and 5, Final Fantasy Tactics and kept playing each new game they launched.
I like how they kept introducing a completely new world with each game, not just rehash of the same world in sequel games. And they were magical, wondrous worlds unlike anything I experienced in other more western based games. They all had a blend of fantasy and science fiction or science fantasy that I thought worked great. It was easy to lose yourselves in those many worlds that Final Fantasy games offered, and it was easy to fall in love with those games and the magic that their worlds contained.
They felt unique and rich in worldbuilding and lore, with less generic fantasy to them than seen in other RPG games. I also played and liked Parasite Eve, another Square game. Personally, I don't agree with that every FF game was so much less after FF7, although FF7 was a masterpiece, games like FF10 and FF12 were still extraordinary and I liked how they tried to implement an 'mmorpg' kind of feel to FF12.
Maybe the biggest flaw was that the Square Enix teams didn't progress enough with the rest of the industry in gameplay mechanics. I mean, they're still great world builders, but their latest creations FF13 and FF14 seem to be lacking some of the magic that earlier FF games managed to create so right. As if they're out of touch with current reality of gaming.
A shame, I had great and lasting memories with playing Square's earlier games, but I guess everything changes continually, that's the way the whole world works
Yeah I agree with what you're saying, and thinking back, I don't know if it was a "steady decline" since FFVI and VII, but I do think that was Square's peak. I also enjoyed Parasite Eve, and I loved Vagrant Story. I liked FFXII as well.
But yeah, FFXIII was TERRIBLE in my mind. They basically just gutted all of the town exploration and mini-games that made Final Fantasy great. It's just one massive dungeon crawl.
I agree with this. For me, FFXII is when it went downhill, but I at least suffered through it enough to claim that I beat it. Oh, but I hated that ending and felt like the game was a huge letdown.
So, I picked up FFXIII, and a month later traded it in and I didn't even care this time that I didn't beat it and at least see the story conclusion, it was that bad to me. FFXIV was the icing on the disappointment cake, especially after breaking my MMORPG teeth on FFXI for so many years, it SHOULD have been like FFXI but modernized and confortable. Instead we got some strange, copy/pasta travesty that I can't even consider an MMORPG. Yet.
I personally think it's Greed and lack of passion that has brought these 2 companies to their current state. It looks like they are scrambling and thrashing about on the cliff's edge, trying not to fall off. They got so big, they lost sight of what made their games so good and what made people play them.
I think the only thing that can save them is to hire devs or a director or 2 that is there for the passion and joy of making an awesome MMORPG and not just for a career/money. Tough to find these days.
So you're basically arguing that once Sony decided to start calling their MMORPG division SOE, they went downhill? I don't really know if I buy this.
SOE is just a part of Sony. Also, spell "Qeynos" backwards, then tell me Sony didn't have much to do with EQ.
Ugh, again, yes I know SONY was involved. Really, I understand that and the cute easter egg of Qeynos.
With that out of the way, what I am saying is that Everquest was developed by a game studio whos single focus was making a great game. Their initial budget was 2 million dollars and no one was expecting it to even be a success. That is why you don't see the Sony brand name on most of the early box art. It was expected to fail.
SOE was put together to as an entire DIVISION of sony to manage their operations in the online entertainment area. SOE had massive budgets and development teams.
The switch from small game studio to massive online division is when the focus and culture of how Sony made online games changed and it was really clear in everquest after the Scars of Velious expansion. Sony didn't just change the name of Verant. They bought out everyones shares in the studio and drove them out of the company.
I hope you can see the difference between a game studio and an entire division of a company.
SoE and Square Enix are 2 different companies in terms of approach to the MMO scene.
SoE lost the plot when WoW came out.
John Smedley (SoE president) fell in love with it, even admitting in a letter he was playing WoW, even though EQ2 was just 6 months old and needed boost from its developers (not praise to the competition)
I have been saying for ages that this guy is the biggest enemy of SoE, not only he gave the green light to the NGE project for SWG, but it turned EQ2 in a WoW clone, he wasted money in Free Realms (Kids do not have credit cards dear John) and wasted even more money and time with 2 console games which were doomed from the word go, DCU and The Agency (R.I.P.)
Sony needs to put in charge someone that has the pulse of the genre, not a person who delegates every choice to his clueless Marketing department.
Games are art, like music and movies, they cannot be developed pending from the marketing people lips.
EQ Next its their last chance (Needs to be a virtual world like EQ), failed that Sony will close SoE and will incorporate its operation into its generic game division (By the way any Sony studio could have developed DCU, they didn't need SoE expertise to create a multiplayer game for console, what Smedley was thinking?)
Square Enix did the opposite of SoE
It just didn't move from the old FFIX
They got stuck in the past and failed to realise the MMO world moved on
FFXIV is FFIX with better graphics but less content and lots of bugs, they even kept the most annoying feature of FFIX.............the bloody awful UI.
Archeage should be the next generation MMORPG, which puts together old and new, it's half sandbox and half theme park..............how difficult could it be to come up with that formula?
That's exactly what every other developer should have done ages ago.
EQ or FF with the Archeage design could make millions to SoE and SE, those IP are ideal for that kind of game.
Instead we got EQ2 (WoW reloaded) and FFIV (FFIX reloaded), what a waste.
So you're basically arguing that once Sony decided to start calling their MMORPG division SOE, they went downhill? I don't really know if I buy this.
SOE is just a part of Sony. Also, spell "Qeynos" backwards, then tell me Sony didn't have much to do with EQ.
Ugh, again, yes I know SONY was involved. Really, I understand that and the cute easter egg of Qeynos.
With that out of the way, what I am saying is that Everquest was developed by a game studio whos single focus was making a great game. Their initial budget was 2 million dollars and no one was expecting it to even be a success. That is why you don't see the Sony brand name on most of the early box art. It was expected to fail.
SOE was put together to as an entire DIVISION of sony to manage their operations in the online entertainment area. SOE had massive budgets and development teams.
The switch from small game studio to massive online division is when the focus and culture of how Sony made online games changed and it was really clear in everquest after the Scars of Velious expansion. Sony didn't just change the name of Verant. They bought out everyones shares in the studio and drove them out of the company.
I hope you can see the difference between a game studio and an entire division of a company.
I think I basically agree with what you're saying. As I understand, your argument was that Sony went downhill once they reorganized their corporation to include SOE and that could be valid.
Still, I do give Sony credit for EQ. Organizational issues aside, EQ was definitely developed by a Sony subsidiary.
They lost their touch when they added up the numbers and forgot behind every number is a human being. And as human beings we use are influence with word of mouth to convey our disdain and mistrust once we have been burned.
many of the large game companys only view subscribers as numbers and they forget that until we remind them that "our" money will leave with us if they keep ignorning the postive and embrace the negative of their actions. you can't design a virtual world and expect the people playing to be virtual property as well. This applys to any game we have a passion for.
Sony could careless for their player base and that shows by some of bold moves used to try and garner more players. Also they seem to make a game, and then all of sudden stop promoting it altogther. It's like a joke someone tells you and everyone hears it, but the reactors are over heating and the core is melting down while smedly tells his joke. and the punch line is like something from officespace, at the end the punchline is about TPS reports and everyone go's ..."awww"
If these game companys want survive and grow again they need to stop all actions, get rid of everyone who is doing the most cocaine and start rebuilding the communitys they leave in ruin when they make a decision.Stop acting like the companys was wronged and start making games and allowing the community to have input on important game breaking decisions. become pro-active stop being a stiff dick in a 3000 dollar suit and tie and start being humble and talk with your players and be postive even when the negative nellys start in.
it's all about building trust and community. without that it will fail.
I think I basically agree with what you're saying. As I understand, your argument was that Sony went downhill once they reorganized their corporation to include SOE and that could be valid.
Still, I do give Sony credit for EQ. Organizational issues aside, EQ was definitely developed by a Sony subsidiary.
True but Verant was lucky that Sony didn't have a clue what they were doing
Now that Sony have a clue what to expecty from a MMO (WoW and $), they force their expectations on the developers, basically spoiling the games from all the potential.
I think I basically agree with what you're saying. As I understand, your argument was that Sony went downhill once they reorganized their corporation to include SOE and that could be valid.
Still, I do give Sony credit for EQ. Organizational issues aside, EQ was definitely developed by a Sony subsidiary.
True but Verant was lucky that Sony didn't have a clue what they were doing
Now that Sony have a clue what to expecty from a MMO (WoW and $), they force their expectations on the developers, basically spoiling the games from all the potential.
Haha yeah, it could be that EQ was successful because Sony Corporate initially kept their nose out of it .
SOE lost their passion for creating games shortly after they purchased Verant.
Soon after that they forced Brad McQuaid out and the EQ expansion release dates were ramped up and the content took a serious nose dive. The first "SOE" only expansion sent players to the freaking moon to play with cat people.
They did the same thing with Raph Koster and SWG and also with Planetside.
Around 2001/2002 SOE making games became secondary concern for SOE and making revenue streams and release dates become top priority.
To put it shortly, SOE died in its own success. EQ was so successful, but SOE never truely understood that its success came from the passion of the people who made it, not from cranking out as many expansions, micro transactions and /pizza as they could cram into a financial quarter.
That is why no single SOE game has ever sustained even half of the success that the original everquest had. I would be that EQ has single handedly outperformed every other SOE total combined.
SOE simpy has no passion left and that is why they turn out crap or ruin whatever they get involved in.
DCUO is booming on the PS3 and EQ2 has definitely had very strong numbers. You gotta remember back in EQ days a huge success was like 200k players, I think the most they ever got was 500k.
SE has always been a pretty shit company. FFXI wasn't developed by SE it was developed by Square Soft, hence why it was a good game. It was published under SE because Enix and Square merged at the time of its launch in NA. Thats when Square lost its touch and FFXIV was born. It also didnt help that they outsourced to China on FFXIV.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
I have no knowledge of Square, but to me SOE started loosing their touch around eq2 launch. As I am informed Blizzard hired alot of the eq team at that time aswell, to create WoW. This also makes sense when you see how much Vanilla WoW had directly from eq.
SOE is famous for ignoring players, and sometimes that works as an advantages - Some of the best features in eq, made people ragequit and whine (surprice it is nothing new hehe). But the backside of the medal is you get cocky thinking you always know best, and that is when SOE started loosing their touch.
Also SOE in particular (and big cooperations in general) cannot admit a mistake, and therefore never fix problems.
It is a guess, but I think too many of the driving forces left SOE, and there was no one left with ambitions on behalf of their game. Too many followers and too few leaders, or just leaders with wrong visions.
A good example is their station site, which in the past 10 years has been the worst slow mess of unaccesible information. I remember returning because I heard there was a free month play for veteran players, and nowhere on sonys sites was this advertised - The only way I knew was because I asked some old guild friends who found a forum post about it.
You just don't compete with Blizzard and other great advertisers like that. I could go on, this is just one example.
Brad saw it all comming, and had another vision than SOE with their EQ2 style, and therefore started Sigil which produced Vanguard .. or attempted.
When did SOE start loosing their touch ? around 2002/2003.
For SOE it was long before the Star Wars Galaxies debacle(s). People were pissed when Velius was released for Everquest, but I enjoyed it. I think the first real mistep was the expansion after Velious, Luclin. That was the first real NGE Sony forced on it's customers. It was all downhill from there. I think that was in late 2001.
Check this guy's track record and the games he has had a hand in. A lot of them are some of the best RPGs. He was behind the original concepts of most of the Final Fantasy games, ending at 9, and skipping 3 and 8.
It wasn't just because he was at Square either, the last RPG he put out was Lost Odyssey for the 360, and if you haven't played it, you should.
DCUO is booming on the PS3 and EQ2 has definitely had very strong numbers. You gotta remember back in EQ days a huge success was like 200k players, I think the most they ever got was 500k.
The population for DCU is nearly identical between PS3 and PC. That comes straight from DCU lead producer in an interview this month. Keep in mind DCU is completely 100% free right now with the 45 day compensation and the servers still cannot get to medium loads. DCU is the biggest failure SOE has ever experienced.
EQ2 just went throught yet another round of server mergers and SOE tried to convert it to a free to play game in effort to revive it. I doubt it has over 100k players anymore. That is fine for a game of its age, but consider that is the flagship game of the entire company. SOE used to have the top 3 most popular mmos in north america with over 1 million combined subscribers.
Cant talk to Square on pc, just played them on Playstions:)
SOE/EQ, i never thought was much of a game i the first place. EQ pretty much defined the words grind and camping:)
If you doubt that you are looking through rose colored glasses.
SWG they were flat out arrogant. All the way through beta to release and beyond to its conclusion, in a few months, (whoever you think is the cause of it closing SOE or LA).
Parts of SWG will live on in memory as some of the best (crafting and exporing to me) . Others not so much:)
Eq 2 was a much better game than EQ to me. Think that it's main problem was that they launched so close to WOW. At that time the market was much,much smaller than it is today. WOW's success did not happen over night. It did grow quite fast, but it was just ( IMO) a very polished and deep game and when people compared WOW to other games, WOW usually came out ahead. Bad timing for EQ 2. If they could of had a year out im the matket with out the competition, it may have ended up with a larger share of the pie. But maybe not:) WOW, again IMO, was and is a better game than anything SOE has put out.
Ahh well short version on SOE, i am not sure they ever had "the touch" to lose it:) Came close with EQ 2 though.
Comments
Everquest was developed under Sony. They didn't purchase it. Look at this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/989_Studios
What happened was that 989 Studios developed EQ under Sony, then the EQ team broke off from 989 to form the independent studio Verant, AFTER the game has already been released.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
"Instant gratification" nuff said? No? okay fine...
EQ and FFXI are long term, 'grindy' games. WoW, being the elephant in the room, will receive credit for turning the MMO genre into an instant gratification genre from a grind driven genre. There's both good and bad effects from this so hate/love it all you want.
Also note, WoW's 'phenomenon' is just that. Remember, they didn't steal every MMO player, they brought in droves and droves of 'casuals' and the newer to life players(read: youngins). This was a complete game changers.
After the genre was flooded with millions of brand new players, the old companies like SOE and SE still had what they used to have but what they used to have isn't what is wanted anymore. They didn't have the 'new' that they needed to adapt to this flood of new players with unique/differing/instant gratification originated opinions.
SOE and SE are the same as what they used to be... and that's the problem. You can't successfully exist in an ever changing world without changing yourself.
Now, you, I and our fellow forum posters will mostly agree about some degree of discontent with the current state of the industry but we're no longer in the majority. Sure, when we're talking about 200-500k subs being a huge success we were perfectly good spokesmen and women but now that where in an era of 12mill subs, we're but a fart in the wind to devs. =/
P.S. about WoW: I find it funny how it's 'instant gratification' and the easy of leveling to max level is one of the main appealing things to all the new players it brought when it's just as, if not more, grindy that these other games. They just did a really good job of hiding all the grind in endgame. When talking about WoW with my "WoW buddy" I'm always making fun of them having over 11 tiers of endgame armor which he'll laugh about and then remark that there's more, just different kinds. If that's not grind...
We really need separate forums for every newly launched game. There can be the anti-<MMO> one and there can be the 'what general discussion should be' one. All the lamenting can happen together where each can find solace in like minded can't-move-on-ers leaving the rest of us to actually move forward and discuss meaningful and relevant topics.
I know that Verant was funded and part of Sony, but Everquest was not developed by Sony Online Entertainment. The culture and priorities of the two development studios are different enough that it is well worth pointing out.
I don't even think you will see SOE as a company on any EQ box art until Shadow of Luclin.
Ah yes, Chronotrigger, how could I forget, and Secret of Mana as well!
Looking back at it, with a Secret of Mana, FF6 and FF7, Parasite Eve, Chronotrigger, Secret of Mana and Vagrant Story, it looks like their glory years peaked in the '90s and first half of the 2000-2010 decennium.
Maybe things went downhill when they lost a lot of money and prestige with the bombing of the Final Fantasy movie
Although personally I didn't find it a bad movie at all, its visuals were outstanding and it had a great atmosphere, only the storyline might not be easy to stomach for people who aren't into scifi or the Japanese take on science fiction and scifi storylines.
EQ up to Scars of Velious was a masterpiece, imo. Too bad it went downhill after that.
Maybe there's a limit to original ideas that you can keep generating, after which designers fall for the easy 'level cap raise, new level cap content and upgraded gear' trap for expansions.
The ACTUAL size of MMORPG worlds: a comparison list between MMO's
The ease with which predictions are made on these forums:
Fratman: "I'm saying Spring 2012 at the earliest [for TOR release]. Anyone still clinging to 2011 is deluding themself at this point."
So you're basically arguing that once Sony decided to start calling their MMORPG division SOE, they went downhill? I don't really know if I buy this.
SOE is just a part of Sony. Also, spell "Qeynos" backwards, then tell me Sony didn't have much to do with EQ.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
They lost their touch when they lost focus of the customers in their products and started believing they could do whatever they wanted to in their games "because we're Sony" or "because we're SE".
Until they get off their high horses and realize that with the level of competition out there they cannot launch games in the same condition or format as they used to years ago or if they don't listen to their customers their newer games will fade quickly. It is amazing how awful SoE has done lately with their mmos and how SE completely dropped the ball on their mmo which should have become one of the bigger games over the last few years.
If I was an investor in either of these companies I would be beyond pissed at how badly things have been managed by these organizations. The writing has been on the wall for some time and both of these companies simply refuse to read it.
1. For god's sake mmo gamers, enough with the analogies. They're unnecessary and your comparisons are terrible, dissimilar, and illogical.
2. To posters feeling the need to state how f2p really isn't f2p: Players understand the concept. You aren't privy to some secret the rest are missing. You're embarrassing yourself.
3. Yes, Cpt. Obvious, we're not industry experts. Now run along and let the big people use the forums for their purpose.
I agree with this. For me, FFXII is when it went downhill, but I at least suffered through it enough to claim that I beat it. Oh, but I hated that ending and felt like the game was a huge letdown.
So, I picked up FFXIII, and a month later traded it in and I didn't even care this time that I didn't beat it and at least see the story conclusion, it was that bad to me. FFXIV was the icing on the disappointment cake, especially after breaking my MMORPG teeth on FFXI for so many years, it SHOULD have been like FFXI but modernized and confortable. Instead we got some strange, copy/pasta travesty that I can't even consider an MMORPG. Yet.
I personally think it's Greed and lack of passion that has brought these 2 companies to their current state. It looks like they are scrambling and thrashing about on the cliff's edge, trying not to fall off. They got so big, they lost sight of what made their games so good and what made people play them.
I think the only thing that can save them is to hire devs or a director or 2 that is there for the passion and joy of making an awesome MMORPG and not just for a career/money. Tough to find these days.
Ugh, again, yes I know SONY was involved. Really, I understand that and the cute easter egg of Qeynos.
With that out of the way, what I am saying is that Everquest was developed by a game studio whos single focus was making a great game. Their initial budget was 2 million dollars and no one was expecting it to even be a success. That is why you don't see the Sony brand name on most of the early box art. It was expected to fail.
SOE was put together to as an entire DIVISION of sony to manage their operations in the online entertainment area. SOE had massive budgets and development teams.
The switch from small game studio to massive online division is when the focus and culture of how Sony made online games changed and it was really clear in everquest after the Scars of Velious expansion. Sony didn't just change the name of Verant. They bought out everyones shares in the studio and drove them out of the company.
I hope you can see the difference between a game studio and an entire division of a company.
SoE and Square Enix are 2 different companies in terms of approach to the MMO scene.
SoE lost the plot when WoW came out.
John Smedley (SoE president) fell in love with it, even admitting in a letter he was playing WoW, even though EQ2 was just 6 months old and needed boost from its developers (not praise to the competition)
I have been saying for ages that this guy is the biggest enemy of SoE, not only he gave the green light to the NGE project for SWG, but it turned EQ2 in a WoW clone, he wasted money in Free Realms (Kids do not have credit cards dear John) and wasted even more money and time with 2 console games which were doomed from the word go, DCU and The Agency (R.I.P.)
Sony needs to put in charge someone that has the pulse of the genre, not a person who delegates every choice to his clueless Marketing department.
Games are art, like music and movies, they cannot be developed pending from the marketing people lips.
EQ Next its their last chance (Needs to be a virtual world like EQ), failed that Sony will close SoE and will incorporate its operation into its generic game division (By the way any Sony studio could have developed DCU, they didn't need SoE expertise to create a multiplayer game for console, what Smedley was thinking?)
Square Enix did the opposite of SoE
It just didn't move from the old FFIX
They got stuck in the past and failed to realise the MMO world moved on
FFXIV is FFIX with better graphics but less content and lots of bugs, they even kept the most annoying feature of FFIX.............the bloody awful UI.
Archeage should be the next generation MMORPG, which puts together old and new, it's half sandbox and half theme park..............how difficult could it be to come up with that formula?
That's exactly what every other developer should have done ages ago.
EQ or FF with the Archeage design could make millions to SoE and SE, those IP are ideal for that kind of game.
Instead we got EQ2 (WoW reloaded) and FFIV (FFIX reloaded), what a waste.
I think I basically agree with what you're saying. As I understand, your argument was that Sony went downhill once they reorganized their corporation to include SOE and that could be valid.
Still, I do give Sony credit for EQ. Organizational issues aside, EQ was definitely developed by a Sony subsidiary.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
They lost their touch when they added up the numbers and forgot behind every number is a human being. And as human beings we use are influence with word of mouth to convey our disdain and mistrust once we have been burned.
many of the large game companys only view subscribers as numbers and they forget that until we remind them that "our" money will leave with us if they keep ignorning the postive and embrace the negative of their actions. you can't design a virtual world and expect the people playing to be virtual property as well. This applys to any game we have a passion for.
Sony could careless for their player base and that shows by some of bold moves used to try and garner more players. Also they seem to make a game, and then all of sudden stop promoting it altogther. It's like a joke someone tells you and everyone hears it, but the reactors are over heating and the core is melting down while smedly tells his joke. and the punch line is like something from officespace, at the end the punchline is about TPS reports and everyone go's ..."awww"
If these game companys want survive and grow again they need to stop all actions, get rid of everyone who is doing the most cocaine and start rebuilding the communitys they leave in ruin when they make a decision.Stop acting like the companys was wronged and start making games and allowing the community to have input on important game breaking decisions. become pro-active stop being a stiff dick in a 3000 dollar suit and tie and start being humble and talk with your players and be postive even when the negative nellys start in.
it's all about building trust and community. without that it will fail.
True but Verant was lucky that Sony didn't have a clue what they were doing
Now that Sony have a clue what to expecty from a MMO (WoW and $), they force their expectations on the developers, basically spoiling the games from all the potential.
Haha yeah, it could be that EQ was successful because Sony Corporate initially kept their nose out of it
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Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
DCUO is booming on the PS3 and EQ2 has definitely had very strong numbers. You gotta remember back in EQ days a huge success was like 200k players, I think the most they ever got was 500k.
SE has always been a pretty shit company. FFXI wasn't developed by SE it was developed by Square Soft, hence why it was a good game. It was published under SE because Enix and Square merged at the time of its launch in NA. Thats when Square lost its touch and FFXIV was born. It also didnt help that they outsourced to China on FFXIV.
"In the immediate future, we have this one, and then weve got another one that is actually going to be so were going to have, what we want to do, is in January, what were targeting to do, this may or may not happen, so you cant hold me to it. But what were targeting to do, is have a fun anniversary to the Ilum shenanigans that happened. An alien race might invade, and they might crash into Ilum and there might be some new activities that happen on the planet." ~Gabe Amatangelo
Lets not forget that Smedly was part of the original EQ and Brad McQuaid left on his own to go make release the train wreck called Vanguard.
I have no knowledge of Square, but to me SOE started loosing their touch around eq2 launch. As I am informed Blizzard hired alot of the eq team at that time aswell, to create WoW. This also makes sense when you see how much Vanilla WoW had directly from eq.
SOE is famous for ignoring players, and sometimes that works as an advantages - Some of the best features in eq, made people ragequit and whine (surprice it is nothing new hehe). But the backside of the medal is you get cocky thinking you always know best, and that is when SOE started loosing their touch.
Also SOE in particular (and big cooperations in general) cannot admit a mistake, and therefore never fix problems.
It is a guess, but I think too many of the driving forces left SOE, and there was no one left with ambitions on behalf of their game. Too many followers and too few leaders, or just leaders with wrong visions.
A good example is their station site, which in the past 10 years has been the worst slow mess of unaccesible information. I remember returning because I heard there was a free month play for veteran players, and nowhere on sonys sites was this advertised - The only way I knew was because I asked some old guild friends who found a forum post about it.
You just don't compete with Blizzard and other great advertisers like that. I could go on, this is just one example.
Brad saw it all comming, and had another vision than SOE with their EQ2 style, and therefore started Sigil which produced Vanguard .. or attempted.
When did SOE start loosing their touch ? around 2002/2003.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
Yeah that is the essense of it all.
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
For SOE it was long before the Star Wars Galaxies debacle(s). People were pissed when Velius was released for Everquest, but I enjoyed it. I think the first real mistep was the expansion after Velious, Luclin. That was the first real NGE Sony forced on it's customers. It was all downhill from there. I think that was in late 2001.
It's been 10 years of futility since then.
Luclin, memory is a little fuzzy... was that the one that made all the buildings float in the air?
Good times... good times.
Square?
When this guy left:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hironobu_Sakaguchi
Check this guy's track record and the games he has had a hand in. A lot of them are some of the best RPGs. He was behind the original concepts of most of the Final Fantasy games, ending at 9, and skipping 3 and 8.
It wasn't just because he was at Square either, the last RPG he put out was Lost Odyssey for the 360, and if you haven't played it, you should.
.. But in a good way.
The population for DCU is nearly identical between PS3 and PC. That comes straight from DCU lead producer in an interview this month. Keep in mind DCU is completely 100% free right now with the 45 day compensation and the servers still cannot get to medium loads. DCU is the biggest failure SOE has ever experienced.
EQ2 just went throught yet another round of server mergers and SOE tried to convert it to a free to play game in effort to revive it. I doubt it has over 100k players anymore. That is fine for a game of its age, but consider that is the flagship game of the entire company. SOE used to have the top 3 most popular mmos in north america with over 1 million combined subscribers.
Look where they are at right now.
Cant talk to Square on pc, just played them on Playstions:)
SOE/EQ, i never thought was much of a game i the first place. EQ pretty much defined the words grind and camping:)
If you doubt that you are looking through rose colored glasses.
SWG they were flat out arrogant. All the way through beta to release and beyond to its conclusion, in a few months, (whoever you think is the cause of it closing SOE or LA).
Parts of SWG will live on in memory as some of the best (crafting and exporing to me) . Others not so much:)
Eq 2 was a much better game than EQ to me. Think that it's main problem was that they launched so close to WOW. At that time the market was much,much smaller than it is today. WOW's success did not happen over night. It did grow quite fast, but it was just ( IMO) a very polished and deep game and when people compared WOW to other games, WOW usually came out ahead. Bad timing for EQ 2. If they could of had a year out im the matket with out the competition, it may have ended up with a larger share of the pie. But maybe not:) WOW, again IMO, was and is a better game than anything SOE has put out.
Ahh well short version on SOE, i am not sure they ever had "the touch" to lose it:) Came close with EQ 2 though.
they lost touch when it all became about the money. they stopped caring about the players and cared more about the almighty dollar. greed kills.