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SOE 'tardation
xauss
Member, Newbie CommonPosts: 384
there is still a vocal section of these forums of those who hate SOE and everything about them. sure they made some bad games in the past - so what they are bad developers (not the only ones). sure they changed SWG and rightly took a lot of flak for that. so what - they can screw-up their products if they want to, just like you do not have to play their games...
what i want to know is why so many think it was SOE's fault that VSOH isn't as good as many hoped or expected? shouldnt the gaming community support a company willing to invest millions and give a developer extra time to get a game released that has so overrun budgets and deadlines that their publishing partner ran from the deal? so what it is on Station Pass, they weren't going to throw away their money for nothing
why the SOE hate on GnH? Platform Publishing are co-publishers with PE, and their role is limited to printing CDs, boxes and getting these into the shops, with some shared marketing. unlike their 'rescue' of VSOH, there is no SOE server hosting, billing, customer support or station pass so why are people talking about boycotting it? are these same people boycotting movie DVDs and music CDs, cinemas, clubs, cars, and all electronic equiptment in case Sony printed the disks or Sony products are used, or hold a patent, liscence or copyright?
Comments
I think you just started a new fad for me...when people are stupid on the web I am going to call them E-tards!
You my friend, are a genius!
EQ: First MMO, loved the game. I left when DAoC came out and didnt go back, but the way they release expansions for a pitiful amount of content caused me to feel that they were pretty money grabbing. Over all my opinion of them was good having enjoyed EQ.
Planetside: Played this after AO, great game, again I had a good opinion of SoE, this was as good as SoE got and it was this point that they had 'their day'.
Star Wars Galaxies: Retail was buggy and content laggy. Players reasoned that they did the same with EQ and look at how successful it was. I played on an off for a few years. I started to feel disgruntled due to the reactions of the SoE Customer Service Dept. People being banned for next to nothing, then the whole "porting into space" incident occured. After the first year or so, I was fed up with SoE's usual "yes its broken but were working on it" with proffesions being broken pretty much most of the time, it was at this point I quit. Then I heard about the first Combat upgrade, so I came back to find it was a load of crap. Fortunately I quit before the NGE, but what I heard disgusted me and playing it now makes me feel nothing but loathing for SoE. The fact they radically changed the entire game, ignoring their core fans in the hope of finding "new" "better" fans, it stinks of SoE attitude. Another thing that angers me is how they started pre-orders of the obi-wan expansion just before NGE, bloody crooks.
Everquest 2: Yet another rushed released MMO. It was barely ready when it was pushed onto the shelf and far from what you would call an enjoyable buy. It has improved in recent days but it took them over a year to get it this way. A year of players paying their cash and patiently waiting for SoE to live up to its promises.
Matrix Online: Granted the game was going downhill. These days SoE are just milking it for cash, little to no effort has gone into reviving this game, which could be revived if they were willing to put alittle money into it. I think they're too busy trying to lick their wounds from the SWG farce.
VSoH: I dont blame SoE for VSoH's state, I blame Sigil for squandering their budget. However, I do feel SoE could have provided Sigil with a few months to prepare their game in, given they had that time, VSoH would be in a much better state and would have had a better launch having avoided the TBC and having spent time on advertising and hype. Sadly, as we have seen before with EQ and SWG, SoE arent the patient types.
Those are just the game issues, not only that but personal experiences with SoE support, and the hearing of other friends/acquantences who have used their support has only lead me to feel further resentment towards SoE. Their attitude towards releasing games makes me loathsome to their titles and I try to wait a year before trying them as I know from past experiences they are a content lacking bug fest. Last but not least their transparentness irates me the most, time and time again have I heard of promises made by this company, goals they would achieve only to be let down. SoE has no humility when they make errors, only the stubbornness of a mule, insistant that they did was right. They ignore the rule that "the customer is always right". I feel that every game they release is not a passion, but an attempt to milk more money out of the gamer, the price of their product is sky high and the quality floor low.
I once said I would never buy a SoE product again, sadly I got hyped by VSoH... Even though I broke that promise, I will always be wary of their games before handing the cash over the counter.
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SOE had a really SHIT 2 years in 2005/6 with the cock-up of SWG, falling sales in EQ2 and MxO being a total failure. However I believe as soon as they saw the figures from the VG launch it hit them and some serious thinking has been done.
EQ1 now has a bigger dev team, MANY of the SWG team are being replaced INCLUDING the producers from both SOE and Lucasarts as well as having its situation and chapters scrapped and reworked. EQ2 is slowly improving its playerbase and MxO has quiet dramatically increased along with Planetside.
SOE had their influencers meeting where some of their biggest haters were invited, and I think this has been a real eye opener.
As we all know SOE loves nothing more then money, money and even more money. And i think they have realised that if they put in the work and really start sorting out their products not only will their playerbase be happier and happy to hand over their money but SOE will get super rich. Which will explain the decent patches across all of their games of late, most noticeably Planetside and SWG.
At one point or another i have loved everything that comes out of SOE. And at another point i have watched them destroy their own products, and i think now they are doing the smart thing of not taking back the past few years but learning from it, sorting everything out, salvaging the good things to come out of 05/06 and scrapping the rest in place of new and decent systems.
The most noticeable improvement they have made is reducing the number of bugs in their games, i know there are still shit loads, but each fix comes with a nice amount of fixes and the new content being pumped out is usually quiet bug free, which is a thing in itself!
So thats my opinion on the situation, personally my situation with SOE is now on par with Sigil. Both companies have got bollocks games, and both of them know it and WANT to sort it. And as soon as things have been sorted i will be back...not b4 tho
0.0%
lol
personally i see ALL games developers as money grabbing and ALL customer service as an exercise in doing as little as possible.
therefore the only real difference between SOE and the rest is the SWG debacle, and the fact that they have had their fingers in so many pies that lots of small amounts of shit cause a big stink
On the negative side for me:
*Completely altered vision of EQ alienating players(also did the same for SWG)
*Planetside and EQ2 I was not very impressed with
On the positive side:
*Many people have noticed SoE have improved EQ2
*EQ, they did improve some of the frustrations of the game
*Have maintained good levels of subscribers in EQ and EQ2
So yeah really quite indifferent my experience, just some positives and negatives. I guess if I was a SWG player though;completely altering the game that people loved so as to alienate them, them I would probably dislike them too.
But then again, look at Turbine. Great release with AC, AC2 wasnt that great but they didnt do any wrong from a PR point of view. Yes, DDO blows but again they didnt do anything to make their customers to feel negative towards them. Now we have LOTRO coming out, are people vocal about the fact Turbine are releasing it and not X company? Nope.
SoE tend to have a habit of making mistakes.
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I dont hate SOE I just have zero confidence in them. Its hard to trust a company that has been caught in so many lies and questionable marketing practices. SOE has a really bad habit of making awful decisions. I dont blame SOE for anything regarding VG though. That has to fall on Sigil's shoulders. People should just be happy that some company picked up the tab after Microsoft dumped them.
The problem with SOE is they are approching MMORPG's like they are standard business products. They develop and buy them in mass quanities and hope on catches on. While this tactic works well for production in other things, and has worked well for EA in single player games, it just doesn't cut it in online games due to the post release development needed..
When people seek a online game they are looking for something that a company will be behind 100%. Lets take SOE's online trading card games for example, in the past year they have released three of them, and now are about to release a forth. Its not that they are bad games, but before you really spend any money in them you are stuck asking yourself, is this the one they will have their developers work on, or will it be the others.
I like pie !
I was *very* interested in Vanguard and liked what I read about its development. I was really excited about a game with player housing and a huge world to play in but the second they announced they were getting into bed with SOE I knew I would never play the game. Same thing goes with Gods and Heroes--sounds like it could be a great game but I won't be playing it and there is a pretty big population of gamers that are right there with me.
Now that vanguard has been released it's pretty evident that it's just a crappy game (that took five years and thirty million dollars to make...I still boggle at those figures) and I don't blame SOE for that but the stunts they are trying to pull now to bring up the subscriber numbers is right out of Smed's playbook (double xp weekends, substantially raising the xp for killing mobs, adding transporters for faster travel, etc).
And just to stop my haters before they post after me: I never had a jedi character in SWG...
thats very sad for you, that you let a faceless corporation make you decisions for you because they are doing what corporations do
but if you want to gimp yourself, thats you perogative, but what you dont say is WHY
if you buy music CDs, films on DVD, even bought a WoW CD, the chances are you have supported Sony anyway and didnt realise it (and unknowingly will continue to do so)
thats very sad for you, that you let a faceless corporation make you decisions for you because they are doing what corporations do
but if you want to gimp yourself, thats you perogative, but what you dont say is WHY
if you buy music CDs, films on DVD, even bought a WoW CD, the chances are you have supported Sony anyway and didnt realise it (and unknowingly will continue to do so)
It's called a boycott and people do it all the time. I decide who to give my money to so I don't know where you get that SOE is making decisions for me.And the distinction may not matter to some people but my distaste is for SOE and John Smedley, not Sony as a whole.
"Granted thinking for yourself could be considered a timesink of shorter or longer duration depending on how smart..or how dumb you are."
Today I sold 4 LCD flat screens for a business in Costa Rica. They weren't Sony. I'll never sell, order, or ship a Sony product, ever.
I have nothing against SOE, I've enjoyed their products. I think they're incredibly foolish for what they've done to SWG, but I also think they've done a lot to improve EQ2. I think SOE is just the most "Wal-mart"...big soulless corporation of the big MMO publishers...if that makes sense. That's why it gets a lot of flack.
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Life sucks, buy a helmet.
Every expansion release is like buying a new game.. yucks.
All canceled. Waiting on Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning.
Ok, I dare you to ask the developer why they released Vanguard in an Alpha version to the public.
They got the word from Sony that no more money was forthcoming unless the game was published. Where do you think they got the funds to make the game?
Next time, put your thinking cap on before asking such a stupid question.
SOE publishes all it's games before they are ready. The original SWG was horrible when first released, took them almost a year to get it decent to play. EQ2 exactly the same way, pretty decent game now, but no one wants to find out anymore because it again was released to beat Wow out of the gate, it was far from ready.
The suits at SOE control game release, not the devs, which is why people dislike them so. It is a wonder they even make any money. Bet the suits are all wondering why Blizzard is making so much money and they aren't. They just don't get it.
Now we have the exact same thing with Vanguard. Do you get the picture now?
For the other questionable post, SOE is Sony Online Entertainment, it is a sub corporation under Sony. Sony electronics, DVD's etc. are entirely different sub corps run by different people. I think almost every one has stated they dislike SOE not Sony in particular. Although some of the stupid stunts their music sub corp has made lately have been real boners.
Unfortunately, I liked Sony electronics products. I have stereo components and a trinatron still going strong after many years. They're good solid products that I've enjoyed very much. When they finally do wear out, they'll be replaced with a different brand. Yes, I'm an ex-SWG addict who had 5 accounts, all cancelled within a month of NGE. But I also noticed the music CD debacle and some very interesting non-production of new products for traditionally peak seasons (like Christmas). I have little if any confidence anymore in Sony or any of its sub-corps.
The problem for me is different from my personal boycott of Anheiser Busch products. That one's easy. There's better tasting beer than Bud and better snacks than Eagle. Boycotting Sony products also includes movies, and that's where things get tricky. Sony owns too much stuf! It's much tougher to boycott them (for me) because they've invaded so much of the entertainment industry. And they keep buying more of that industry. Like their approach to MMOs. Buy as many as possible, support them as little as possible, and take as much money as possible out of them before letting them die.
So, my boycott of SOE itself is pretty easy, but extending that boycott to the parent company and sub-companies becomes very difficult.
-- Xix
"I know what you're thinking: 'Why, oh WHY, didn't I take the BLUE pill?'"
Actually, this isnt strictly true.
Vanguard was funded 5 years ago by a consortium of various businesses. This gave them an unprecedented budget for an unknown company. Microsoft agreed to publish the game for a cost, and agreed to further fund the company. Microsoft then, for whatever reason, allowed Sigil to buy themselves out of the publishing contract. This cost Sigil a large amount of cash, meaning their funding dried up alot quicker than anticipated. They renegotiated a contract with SOE, who would then publish the game and run the servers. This gave them an additional amount of money to further develop, which they would not have had otherwise. However, the main bulk of cash was running out and so they decided to launch in order for money to start coming in, and so they could remain as a viable product. SOE was happy of course as they got their percentage of revenue, but they werent responsible for Sigil releasing early. SOE's only input was publishing and servers, and they were not losing money, nor could they legally force Sigil to go live. This was never part of any contract. So in fact, if not for SOE coming along when they did Sigil may well have either gone bankrupt, or worse, MS would have just shelved it and it would never have been seen.
Oh, and while we are at it, the ONLY MMO SOE ever made themselves was EQ2, a game which this site said "was quite possibly the best fantasy MMO on the market today". All the others were either bought after creation (EQ1, VG, MxO, PS) or were created following a set of guidelines from another company (SWG).
EQ1 was created by SOE, but at the time they were known by a different name. Either way, it was all the same company and was always a part of Sony.