Who in your opinion is the worse game developer/publisher in regards to MMO's? My vote will go to SOE for there general lack of commitment to develop and promote their games. Think Vanguard, EQ, Pirates of the Burning Sea, the Matrix Online, plantside and so on and you get the picture of a company that seems indifferent to their own product. But perhaps their greatest sin was creating Everquest 2 when they should of continued to invest in the original. Although Everquest 2 extended comes a close second.
Vanguard and matrix online were inherited games and they did try and develop both but matrix online has almost no players and a bad rep so was not worth it in end.MxO lived a heck longer thanks to SoE.
Vanguard had loads of changes made by SoE when they got it but again was too badly hit at launch.Also remember your mmorpg history.SoE came and gave Brad a lifeline after M$ dumped him in the cold.The game was about to die before been born ,yet it is still alive.
POBS was not originally developed by SoE neither.
Dunno what you mean about EQ not getting commitment they update they game regularly and are on their 17th xpac.
As for you saying they should have focused on EQ1 rather then make EQ2 ,well considering they never stopped giving support and development to EQ1 i cannot see the problem.
Also at least they have the guts to progress a franchise rather then leave it stale and die in history.For this i am grateful and espically with EQnext in the make it would mean folks like me and many others who love the world of norrath will continue to see it evolve both in story and graphics as new games.
Look at ultima online .The fact EA has kept killing off sequels has made the world of ultima which has a looong tradition nothing more then some ancient graphics with a havily diminshing population .No new blood ,Nothing.
Asheron's call is even sadder .Canning AC2 has more or less banished that lore into history.
At least i seen many new faces when EQ2 launch who never even played EQ1 and hopefully same with EQnext.
Does SoE make mistakes .Hell yes.They made a mess of planetside and have literraly abandoned the only true mmofps around.SWG we all know about it too.
But in my mind no one has handled mmorpg as poor as EA.Cryptic is a close second and don't blame anyone that thinks it should be first.
We're redefining the mmo genre, instead of a quest to kill 10 rats you won't just see those missions in STO...
The c-store, holy cow, these guys take a cash shop to the next level. Sure Lotr and DDO have a pritty big cash shop, but they are FTP!!! In most games you pay the full sub fee and you have access to most of the crap in the game, not in Cryptic's world.
The same tired engine that ran CO, what the heck, let's give them uniforms and phasors and BAM, ground combat.
Look, some companies drop the ball at launch, but AoC seems to be doing ok atm. APB, yeah, that was a nightmare. Shoot the local walmart just a couple of weeks ago was selling a tabula rasa box set... These you shoot and you hope, but cryptic, cryptic, the crap they package as a good game, developed in under 2 years, I wonder how they sleep at night. I wonder why people keep buying their games. SOE and funcom have issues and EA is the kiss of death, but would at least give their games a chance before the next cryptic product.
Ebay tells just how great STO is, you can buy a new-ish one for 3 bucks with no bids. The best of the Thompson Twins is worth more... This game is crap, Cryptic is crap, no contest who is the worst developer.
Who in your opinion is the worse game developer/publisher in regards to MMO's? My vote will go to SOE for there general lack of commitment to develop and promote their games. Think Vanguard, EQ, Pirates of the Burning Sea, the Matrix Online, plantside and so on and you get the picture of a company that seems indifferent to their own product. But perhaps their greatest sin was creating Everquest 2 when they should of continued to invest in the original. Although Everquest 2 extended comes a close second.
The issue I have with this is that SOE was not the developer (at least initially) for some of the MMOs you listed.
Vanguard - originally developed by Sigil Games Online w/ Brad McQuaid as the designer. Had SOE not stepped in to take it over, the game would be non-existant. I give props to SOE for keeping the game alive for the game's fans. Had it been EA the game would have been shut down.
Pirates of the Burning Sea - developed by Flying Lab Software. I don't recall what SOE's involvement was as the publisher but the developer is the one that's really ultimately responsible for the game.
Matrix Online - was originally developed by Monolith and published by Warner Bros/Sega. SOE came in much later. Again, their involvement extended the life of the game.
So that leaves us with EQ & EQ2. I don't think anyone can argue with the success of EverQuest. After a decade the game is still being played. As for EverQuest 2, the success of that game says otherwise. EverQuest 2 Extended is just an adaptation on their part to the trend in the MMO market of the F2P model. Should they just ignore the trend and not attempt to adapt their business to the changing business market?
Re. Vanguard: according to the wiki, SOE devs worked alongside Sigil devs to create that disaster. SOE also apparently set the release date before Sigil said the game was ready for the public. After they took over completely, they revamped the game. The outcry from the players prompted discussion about the possibility of "classic" servers. That doesn't sound like a glowing report on SOE's involvement.
You're also leaving out perhaps SOE's greatest failure of all time. In fact one of their own senior devs on the project described it as an organizational, epic grade f*ck up. That would be Star Wars Galaxies.
Leaving out SWG when discussing SOE, and trying to point fingers at SOE's partners on many of their other struggling products seems like quite a spin job tbh.
Behind SOE, I wasn't too excited about Funcom's release of Conan or Cryptic's release of STO. I heard Funcom at least made some leadership changes after the fact, and has tried to improve their game. Seems like Cryptic is developing a habit of early release, double-dipping with their fees, and then moving on to another project (e.g. Champions and STO). I used to respect them for their work on City of Heroes. The game was a bit repetative, but it was solid imo.
You are wrong wiki clearly states SoE co published vanguard which is true when M$ pulled out late in the game and SoE stepped in and gave the money for sigil to complete it at a late stage.Even at release SoE was only the publishers and all GM and devs at that stage were sigil before SoE took over the developement at which stage the game was already live for months.
I will quote wiki for you
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is a high fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) created by Sigil Games Online, and now developed and run by Sony Online Entertainment. Originally, the game was co-published by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), and the company producing it, Sigil Games Online. The game was released on January 30, 2007, with an early access date of January 26, 2007 for pre-order customers. On May 15, 2007, it was announced in a press release that Sony Online Entertainment had completed a transaction to purchase key assets of Sigil Games Online, including all rights to Vanguard[1][2].
The game initially sold around 242,000 copies, while the number of active subscriptions (those who play longer than the free month included when buying the game) was estimated to be around 130,000[3], to drop in the next months to about 40,000[4]. For much of 2009 the population of Vanguard was almost non-existent. Though recently, after some changes in the game to make it more stable, the population has started to rise again and it has a noticeably larger in-game player presence.
Following the acquisition by SOE, the developers mainly focused on bug fixes and gameplay improvements for a long time. In July 2008, the developers announced they wanted to attract old and new players as the game had reached a much more presentable state[5]. On September 10, 2008, Game Update 6[6] finally introduced the long awaited trial island, the Isle of Dawn, which also quickly became the standard starting area for new regular characters. On October 8, 2008, the trial version was released[7][8].
Now as you can see SoE did not even acquire the game till may and i can tell you from experience as i have followed this game for years and did play for month that did not actively start developing the game till late july at which point you can see from wiki the population was already below 40k subs
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Vanguard and matrix online were inherited games and they did try and develop both but matrix online has almost no players and a bad rep so was not worth it in end.MxO lived a heck longer thanks to SoE.
Vanguard had loads of changes made by SoE when they got it but again was too badly hit at launch.Also remember your mmorpg history.SoE came and gave Brad a lifeline after M$ dumped him in the cold.The game was about to die before been born ,yet it is still alive.
POBS was not originally developed by SoE neither.
Dunno what you mean about EQ not getting commitment they update they game regularly and are on their 17th xpac.
As for you saying they should have focused on EQ1 rather then make EQ2 ,well considering they never stopped giving support and development to EQ1 i cannot see the problem.
Also at least they have the guts to progress a franchise rather then leave it stale and die in history.For this i am grateful and espically with EQnext in the make it would mean folks like me and many others who love the world of norrath will continue to see it evolve both in story and graphics as new games.
Look at ultima online .The fact EA has kept killing off sequels has made the world of ultima which has a looong tradition nothing more then some ancient graphics with a havily diminshing population .No new blood ,Nothing.
Asheron's call is even sadder .Canning AC2 has more or less banished that lore into history.
At least i seen many new faces when EQ2 launch who never even played EQ1 and hopefully same with EQnext.
Does SoE make mistakes .Hell yes.They made a mess of planetside and have literraly abandoned the only true mmofps around.SWG we all know about it too.
But in my mind no one has handled mmorpg as poor as EA.Cryptic is a close second and don't blame anyone that thinks it should be first.
Me. Seriously... I've not written so much of a line of code yet.
Ascension - EU Mature, Friendly, Laid Back SW:TOR Guild now recruiting.
Cryptic, no contest. On the scale of 1 to poop, they're poop. Has any company ever used so much bait and switch prior?
Here's a great interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrnjHiBzOIc
We're redefining the mmo genre, instead of a quest to kill 10 rats you won't just see those missions in STO...
The c-store, holy cow, these guys take a cash shop to the next level. Sure Lotr and DDO have a pritty big cash shop, but they are FTP!!! In most games you pay the full sub fee and you have access to most of the crap in the game, not in Cryptic's world.
The same tired engine that ran CO, what the heck, let's give them uniforms and phasors and BAM, ground combat.
Look, some companies drop the ball at launch, but AoC seems to be doing ok atm. APB, yeah, that was a nightmare. Shoot the local walmart just a couple of weeks ago was selling a tabula rasa box set... These you shoot and you hope, but cryptic, cryptic, the crap they package as a good game, developed in under 2 years, I wonder how they sleep at night. I wonder why people keep buying their games. SOE and funcom have issues and EA is the kiss of death, but would at least give their games a chance before the next cryptic product.
Ebay tells just how great STO is, you can buy a new-ish one for 3 bucks with no bids. The best of the Thompson Twins is worth more... This game is crap, Cryptic is crap, no contest who is the worst developer.
You are wrong wiki clearly states SoE co published vanguard which is true when M$ pulled out late in the game and SoE stepped in and gave the money for sigil to complete it at a late stage.Even at release SoE was only the publishers and all GM and devs at that stage were sigil before SoE took over the developement at which stage the game was already live for months.
I will quote wiki for you
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes is a high fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) created by Sigil Games Online, and now developed and run by Sony Online Entertainment. Originally, the game was co-published by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), and the company producing it, Sigil Games Online. The game was released on January 30, 2007, with an early access date of January 26, 2007 for pre-order customers. On May 15, 2007, it was announced in a press release that Sony Online Entertainment had completed a transaction to purchase key assets of Sigil Games Online, including all rights to Vanguard [1][2].
The game initially sold around 242,000 copies, while the number of active subscriptions (those who play longer than the free month included when buying the game) was estimated to be around 130,000[3], to drop in the next months to about 40,000[4]. For much of 2009 the population of Vanguard was almost non-existent. Though recently, after some changes in the game to make it more stable, the population has started to rise again and it has a noticeably larger in-game player presence.
Following the acquisition by SOE, the developers mainly focused on bug fixes and gameplay improvements for a long time. In July 2008, the developers announced they wanted to attract old and new players as the game had reached a much more presentable state[5]. On September 10, 2008, Game Update 6[6] finally introduced the long awaited trial island, the Isle of Dawn, which also quickly became the standard starting area for new regular characters. On October 8, 2008, the trial version was released[7][8].
Now as you can see SoE did not even acquire the game till may and i can tell you from experience as i have followed this game for years and did play for month that did not actively start developing the game till late july at which point you can see from wiki the population was already below 40k subs