I cancelled my amazon Prime today based on their hiring of smeldley do the same if you you do not support him and let amazon know why!
While i dont care much for the guy he certainly isnt worth boycoting a company over. Amazon are pouring money into western game development, which im really happy about. If he fucks up again i doubt Bezos will keep him around for long.
people always need the antagonist. the witch they can burn.
you know, running a business is difficult. its not always a choice you can make but a must.
give it a chance. it doesnt have an mpact on your real life anyway, so calm down.
Not to mention Lucas Arts was the publisher, that's usually who decides when and how products are released. That's the thing about all of this Smed hoopla. There were a lot of players in these decisions, yet not a single other entity is blamed but Smed. Even with SOE's performance as a whole, people miss the big picture and focus in on Smed. Not considering Sony itself may have simply not given two shits about SOE and wanted to phase it out for years. Which would drastically effect their ability to deliver.
As you said though there's gotta be that conduit all can use as a lighting rod for their ire. In this case that's Smed.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
He'll probably be fine, just what Amazon needs to build upon. He just needs to stop all the social media. He talks too much crap, promises wild things, teases with possibilities and none of it ever happens. It almost always backfires. If he didn't always put his foot in his mouth, people probably wouldn't react so strongly.
At least we all know Amazon can lose a billion dollars and be like us losing a 10 spot. Let's just sit back watch the show and see what he delivers. Maybe this is the one that will blow us all out of the water.
“The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept.”
―
George Carlin
I'm interested to know about those lies you're referring to. You've got any concrete example?
There are many examples. Like how he would never bring a Cash Shop into a longtime running Subscription based MMO like EverQuest II. That it was bad business practices to double dip on both Subscriptions and a Cash Shop, assuring the playerbase it would never happen! Only in newly developed games.
Then with an upcoming expansion for EverQuest II, it had a long closed beta for it and an open beta hinting at nothing at all and then put up preorders for the expansion, including expensive collector's editions.
Since EQ2's playerbase was very loyal, most People always pre-ordered the expansions and he knew it!
So he waited until the expansion launched and released a big patch on launchday that suddenly introduced a Cash Shop out of the blue straight onto the Live servers. Unanounced and untested!
Well, you can believe the backlash that ensued and a huge number of People (me included) immediately dropped their Subscriptions and quit the game.
This was one of the nastiest classic Bait and Switch tactics I have seen and ofcourse no refunds were giving on expansion purchase.
And this is just one of many examples about the notorious John Smedley!
Broken promises suck and I understand how it may have angered a lot of players to pre-order an expansion in which they've added a cash shop without announcing it. I do not consider it a lie (changing idea or moving away from original plans, for whatever reasons, is not lying if we really believed at that time that we would / could fulfill this promise) but that's certainly not an honest move imo. Otoh I make mistakes too and I'm not always honest, and it's hard to judge a situation without knowing the full context.
It's as dirty as a dirty move can get! Come on now! This is a classic example of Bait&Switch tactics!
He knew it would anger a lot of people and that it would cause a huge backlash, so he deliberately hide it during the beta phase and pre-order phase to maximise expansion sales and screw People over and then just added it through a launch day stealth patch with no announcement whatsoever!
People logged in unaware and were suddenly confronted with a big Cash Shop popping up right in their faces!
After reading a bit about the topic, I found out that:
in June 2010, SOE announced EQ2X, a free-to-play version of EQ2 that would feature microtransactions
on November 10, 2011, SOE announced that EQ2 would soon adopt the pricing model of EQ2X
on December 6, 2011, SOE released the expansion Age of Discovery while fully switching the pricing model to free-to-play
So if I'm correct it's different than what you claimed "just added it through a launch day stealth patch with no announcement whatsoever!"
LOL! That one is entirely different. That was much later.
The intial Cash Shop was released long before that, with the Shadow Odyssey expansion on November 18, 2008.
Smedley even messed around with a Station Exchange server (Live gamer hosted), the infamous Bazaar server, where people could sell and buy characters and Equipment with real cash. That server was released somewhere in 2005 and terminated in 2011 before the Free2Play model transition happened. That was another controversy and Money grab invention by The Smed. Something that Blizzard tried to copy later in Diablo III with the real money auction house.
Bazaar wasn't terminated. It was merged into Freeport. The actual in game cash shop didn't happen for all servers until F2P.
Bazaar was an Exchange Server! NOT a F2P server. It was a seperate server hosted via LiveGamer. It was excluded from Character transfers as to not upset the Balance of the "normal" Live servers or there would have been an even bigger fallout! It was just one of those Money grab "hobby" experiments from Smedley. And yes you were right, the Exchange Auction was terminated and the server population itself was merged with Freeport.
The first Cash Shop was launched on Nov.18, 2008 with the Shadow Odyssey expansion on all Live servers! I was there and witnessed the fallout. I will never forget.
SOE were double dipping with Cash Shop and Subscription all the way until the real F2P transition happened somewhere in 2011, almost 4 years later.
Just keep him away from ''New world'' and ill be happy.
I hope he's working on New World. He oversaw the development of many great MMO games (Everquest, Planetside 2, DC:UO, SWG, Vanguard, EQ2, Free Realms, etc.) and I believe he could bring something positive to this project.
And subsequently wrecked most of them, trying to make more money. This idiot has killed the golden goose more times than I can remember, and not just on a game or two. Plus he has been caught lying so many times, nothing he says can be believed.
I'm interested to know about those lies you're referring to. You've got any concrete example?
There are many examples. Like how he would never bring a Cash Shop into a longtime running Subscription based MMO like EverQuest II. That it was bad business practices to double dip on both Subscriptions and a Cash Shop, assuring the playerbase it would never happen! Only in newly developed games.
Then with an upcoming expansion for EverQuest II, it had a long closed beta for it and an open beta hinting at nothing at all and then put up preorders for the expansion, including expensive collector's editions.
Since EQ2's playerbase was very loyal, most People always pre-ordered the expansions and he knew it!
So he waited until the expansion launched and released a big patch on launchday that suddenly introduced a Cash Shop out of the blue straight onto the Live servers. Unanounced and untested!
Well, you can believe the backlash that ensued and a huge number of People (me included) immediately dropped their Subscriptions and quit the game.
This was one of the nastiest classic Bait and Switch tactics I have seen and ofcourse no refunds were giving on expansion purchase.
And this is just one of many examples about the notorious John Smedley!
Yeah, that's total bullshit. I was there. I tested the entire closed alpha/beta F2P thing. When they opened the F2P server everyone wanted on it. People were jumping ship off the live servers to Freeport. People didn't want to buy the xpac if live servers weren't going to switch and they were mad about having to abandon characters on live for Freeport.
The first iterations of the cash shop were pretty buggy though, but they were also patched fairly quickly.
If there was any criticism about the transition is that they didn't actually want to do it. They wanted to stay sub locked, but the industry was changing and they were getting left behind again. So their early versions of Bronze, Silver, and Gold were pretty shitty. That said, they did make changes. The game was great for several years after that until things went tits up with Sony.
Again! The F2P transition did not happen until 2011!
The first Cash Shop was added via an expansion launchday stealth patch on Nov.18, 2008 !
I was there! I have been playing EverQuest 2 since 2004 up until around 2012-2013, before I finally gave up and moved on. I have witnessed all of Smedley's monetizing Experiments.
I'm interested to know about those lies you're referring to. You've got any concrete example?
There are many examples. Like how he would never bring a Cash Shop into a longtime running Subscription based MMO like EverQuest II. That it was bad business practices to double dip on both Subscriptions and a Cash Shop, assuring the playerbase it would never happen! Only in newly developed games.
Then with an upcoming expansion for EverQuest II, it had a long closed beta for it and an open beta hinting at nothing at all and then put up preorders for the expansion, including expensive collector's editions.
Since EQ2's playerbase was very loyal, most People always pre-ordered the expansions and he knew it!
So he waited until the expansion launched and released a big patch on launchday that suddenly introduced a Cash Shop out of the blue straight onto the Live servers. Unanounced and untested!
Well, you can believe the backlash that ensued and a huge number of People (me included) immediately dropped their Subscriptions and quit the game.
This was one of the nastiest classic Bait and Switch tactics I have seen and ofcourse no refunds were giving on expansion purchase.
And this is just one of many examples about the notorious John Smedley!
Broken promises suck and I understand how it may have angered a lot of players to pre-order an expansion in which they've added a cash shop without announcing it. I do not consider it a lie (changing idea or moving away from original plans, for whatever reasons, is not lying if we really believed at that time that we would / could fulfill this promise) but that's certainly not an honest move imo. Otoh I make mistakes too and I'm not always honest, and it's hard to judge a situation without knowing the full context.
It's as dirty as a dirty move can get! Come on now! This is a classic example of Bait&Switch tactics!
He knew it would anger a lot of people and that it would cause a huge backlash, so he deliberately hide it during the beta phase and pre-order phase to maximise expansion sales and screw People over and then just added it through a launch day stealth patch with no announcement whatsoever!
People logged in unaware and were suddenly confronted with a big Cash Shop popping up right in their faces!
After reading a bit about the topic, I found out that:
in June 2010, SOE announced EQ2X, a free-to-play version of EQ2 that would feature microtransactions
on November 10, 2011, SOE announced that EQ2 would soon adopt the pricing model of EQ2X
on December 6, 2011, SOE released the expansion Age of Discovery while fully switching the pricing model to free-to-play
So if I'm correct it's different than what you claimed "just added it through a launch day stealth patch with no announcement whatsoever!"
LOL! That one is entirely different. That was much later.
The intial Cash Shop was released long before that, with the Shadow Odyssey expansion on November 18, 2008.
Smedley even messed around with a Station Exchange server (Live gamer hosted), the infamous Bazaar server, where people could sell and buy characters and Equipment with real cash. That server was released somewhere in 2005 and terminated in 2011 before the Free2Play model transition happened. That was another controversy and Money grab invention by The Smed. Something that Blizzard tried to copy later in Diablo III with the real money auction house.
Ahh I see ok, well thanks again for taking the time to explain this stuff.
I'm interested to know about those lies you're referring to. You've got any concrete example?
There are many examples. Like how he would never bring a Cash Shop into a longtime running Subscription based MMO like EverQuest II. That it was bad business practices to double dip on both Subscriptions and a Cash Shop, assuring the playerbase it would never happen! Only in newly developed games.
Then with an upcoming expansion for EverQuest II, it had a long closed beta for it and an open beta hinting at nothing at all and then put up preorders for the expansion, including expensive collector's editions.
Since EQ2's playerbase was very loyal, most People always pre-ordered the expansions and he knew it!
So he waited until the expansion launched and released a big patch on launchday that suddenly introduced a Cash Shop out of the blue straight onto the Live servers. Unanounced and untested!
Well, you can believe the backlash that ensued and a huge number of People (me included) immediately dropped their Subscriptions and quit the game.
This was one of the nastiest classic Bait and Switch tactics I have seen and ofcourse no refunds were giving on expansion purchase.
And this is just one of many examples about the notorious John Smedley!
Broken promises suck and I understand how it may have angered a lot of players to pre-order an expansion in which they've added a cash shop without announcing it. I do not consider it a lie (changing idea or moving away from original plans, for whatever reasons, is not lying if we really believed at that time that we would / could fulfill this promise) but that's certainly not an honest move imo. Otoh I make mistakes too and I'm not always honest, and it's hard to judge a situation without knowing the full context.
It's as dirty as a dirty move can get! Come on now! This is a classic example of Bait&Switch tactics!
He knew it would anger a lot of people and that it would cause a huge backlash, so he deliberately hide it during the beta phase and pre-order phase to maximise expansion sales and screw People over and then just added it through a launch day stealth patch with no announcement whatsoever!
People logged in unaware and were suddenly confronted with a big Cash Shop popping up right in their faces!
After reading a bit about the topic, I found out that:
in June 2010, SOE announced EQ2X, a free-to-play version of EQ2 that would feature microtransactions
on November 10, 2011, SOE announced that EQ2 would soon adopt the pricing model of EQ2X
on December 6, 2011, SOE released the expansion Age of Discovery while fully switching the pricing model to free-to-play
So if I'm correct it's different than what you claimed "just added it through a launch day stealth patch with no announcement whatsoever!"
LOL! That one is entirely different. That was much later.
The intial Cash Shop was released long before that, with the Shadow Odyssey expansion on November 18, 2008.
Smedley even messed around with a Station Exchange server (Live gamer hosted), the infamous Bazaar server, where people could sell and buy characters and Equipment with real cash. That server was released somewhere in 2005 and terminated in 2011 before the Free2Play model transition happened. That was another controversy and Money grab invention by The Smed. Something that Blizzard tried to copy later in Diablo III with the real money auction house.
Ahh I see ok, well thanks again for taking the time to explain this stuff.
Awesome find! You gotta love the caching power of the internet! SOE might have deleted the old forums and replaced them with new, but it will always be on the internet.
That first response in that feedback thread just says it all. The exact sentiment of how many of us felt.
It really just shows the modus operandi of SOE at that time! No respect for their paying loyal customers at all! ZERO!
I'm interested to know about those lies you're referring to. You've got any concrete example?
There are many examples. Like how he would never bring a Cash Shop into a longtime running Subscription based MMO like EverQuest II. That it was bad business practices to double dip on both Subscriptions and a Cash Shop, assuring the playerbase it would never happen! Only in newly developed games.
Then with an upcoming expansion for EverQuest II, it had a long closed beta for it and an open beta hinting at nothing at all and then put up preorders for the expansion, including expensive collector's editions.
Since EQ2's playerbase was very loyal, most People always pre-ordered the expansions and he knew it!
So he waited until the expansion launched and released a big patch on launchday that suddenly introduced a Cash Shop out of the blue straight onto the Live servers. Unanounced and untested!
Well, you can believe the backlash that ensued and a huge number of People (me included) immediately dropped their Subscriptions and quit the game.
This was one of the nastiest classic Bait and Switch tactics I have seen and ofcourse no refunds were giving on expansion purchase.
And this is just one of many examples about the notorious John Smedley!
Broken promises suck and I understand how it may have angered a lot of players to pre-order an expansion in which they've added a cash shop without announcing it. I do not consider it a lie (changing idea or moving away from original plans, for whatever reasons, is not lying if we really believed at that time that we would / could fulfill this promise) but that's certainly not an honest move imo. Otoh I make mistakes too and I'm not always honest, and it's hard to judge a situation without knowing the full context.
It's as dirty as a dirty move can get! Come on now! This is a classic example of Bait&Switch tactics!
He knew it would anger a lot of people and that it would cause a huge backlash, so he deliberately hide it during the beta phase and pre-order phase to maximise expansion sales and screw People over and then just added it through a launch day stealth patch with no announcement whatsoever!
People logged in unaware and were suddenly confronted with a big Cash Shop popping up right in their faces!
After reading a bit about the topic, I found out that:
in June 2010, SOE announced EQ2X, a free-to-play version of EQ2 that would feature microtransactions
on November 10, 2011, SOE announced that EQ2 would soon adopt the pricing model of EQ2X
on December 6, 2011, SOE released the expansion Age of Discovery while fully switching the pricing model to free-to-play
So if I'm correct it's different than what you claimed "just added it through a launch day stealth patch with no announcement whatsoever!"
LOL! That one is entirely different. That was much later.
The intial Cash Shop was released long before that, with the Shadow Odyssey expansion on November 18, 2008.
Smedley even messed around with a Station Exchange server (Live gamer hosted), the infamous Bazaar server, where people could sell and buy characters and Equipment with real cash. That server was released somewhere in 2005 and terminated in 2011 before the Free2Play model transition happened. That was another controversy and Money grab invention by The Smed. Something that Blizzard tried to copy later in Diablo III with the real money auction house.
Ahh I see ok, well thanks again for taking the time to explain this stuff.
Awesome find! You gotta love the caching power of the internet! SOE might have deleted the old forums and replaced them with new, but it will always be on the internet.
That first response in that feedback thread just says it all. The exact sentiment of how many of us felt.
It really just shows the modus operandi of SOE at that time! No respect for their paying loyal customers at all! ZERO!
That was a good find indeed. It validates everything you were saying about the surprise patch.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Riddle me this, why Amazon recruited Smedley but not Georgeson? What kind of qualifications that Amazon saw in Smed?
He had hired Georgeson before. I'd hire anyone with that on their resume.
Constantine, The Console Poster
"One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves." - Carl Jung
I think he is being hired simply for his experience for having seen everything from Verant to Daybreak. That is invaluable as he to able advice and see the pitfalls from actual experience of making poor decisions. Many people don't have the benefit of hindsight from a close up view of the same. He does and I bet Amazon would want someone with that type of knowledge.
What you all see is nothing compared to what he must have seen, heard and experienced while being with a company that grew From Verant to SOE and finally diminishing to Daybreak. I think he must have wisdom that comes from having been through so much with this industry. Pity that people are more apt to disparage from some personal vendetta against him but the industry can learn much from him especially a fledgling attempt into this genre.
people always need the antagonist. the witch they can burn.
you know, running a business is difficult. its not always a choice you can make but a must.
give it a chance. it doesnt have an mpact on your real life anyway, so calm down.
Not to mention Lucas Arts was the publisher, that's usually who decides when and how products are released. That's the thing about all of this Smed hoopla. There were a lot of players in these decisions, yet not a single other entity is blamed but Smed. Even with SOE's performance as a whole, people miss the big picture and focus in on Smed. Not considering Sony itself may have simply not given two shits about SOE and wanted to phase it out for years. Which would drastically effect their ability to deliver.
As you said though there's gotta be that conduit all can use as a lighting rod for their ire. In this case that's Smed.
Attempting to defend Smedley is just ludicrous. He ran SOE into the ground. His only success was EQ and when that faded there was nothing to rest his laurels on although EQ2 did have some brief success. It was not just SWG that he messed up and that was his call, not Lucas Arts, it was the entire line up.
He really needs to find another line of work, because he does not seem to be able to do anything innovative that people like.
Lol, how the haters are crying, they though the Smed was dead Lmfao.
Not haters, just setting up bets how long it takes for the company to die and/or to fire John "NGE" Smedley.
Hey, again, Smed is merely the greatest scapegoat in history, so the "NGE" isn't really his scarlet letter to wear. Why? It's quite well documented by devs and other team members that this was NOT Smed's decision. Even Smed said, at the time, it was a "mutual" decision between SOE and LucasArts, but that's bullshit. He's just a really good scapegoat because years later, despite there being a fuck ton of information to the contrary, people still think he was responsible for that debacle, lol. That being said, it's probably the reason he got this job. He's a good corporate guy who is magnetic (for shitstorms) and he's weight that can be shed if things go sideways and Amazon will come out smelling like roses because they just "made the best decision ever by firing him.", effectively giving them a second life. Do you know how much a company would pay for a second life?
Seriously, though, use the Internets and read articles published at the time versus what's available now from guys like Raph Koster. It's very enlightening.
Actually in the process of trying to speak to some higher ups at amazon to let them know this guys track record and what the community thinks of him, so far iv gone through the basic amazon cust support, Spoke with a customer support manager then her boss and now awaiting a call or so they say sometime next week from a suit in the hiring hr dept or something like that. Ill keep everyone updated
Hey Hey Ho Ho this smedley man he gots to go!!! Hey Hey Ho Ho this smedley man he gots to go!!! No hate No Fear Mr. Smedely you aint welcome here!!! No hate No Fear Mr. Smedely you aint welcome here!!! Hey Hey Ho Ho this smedley man he gots to go!!! Hey Hey Ho Ho this smedley man he gots to go!!! No hate No Fear Mr. Smedely you aint welcome here!!! No hate No Fear Mr. Smedely you aint welcome here!!!
Comments
Aloha Mr Hand !
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Amazon are pouring money into western game development, which im really happy about. If he fucks up again i doubt Bezos will keep him around for long.
Philosophy of MMO Game Design
As you said though there's gotta be that conduit all can use as a lighting rod for their ire. In this case that's Smed.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
― George Carlin
Bazaar was an Exchange Server! NOT a F2P server. It was a seperate server hosted via LiveGamer. It was excluded from Character transfers as to not upset the Balance of the "normal" Live servers or there would have been an even bigger fallout!
It was just one of those Money grab "hobby" experiments from Smedley.
And yes you were right, the Exchange Auction was terminated and the server population itself was merged with Freeport.
The first Cash Shop was launched on Nov.18, 2008 with the Shadow Odyssey expansion on all Live servers!
I was there and witnessed the fallout. I will never forget.
SOE were double dipping with Cash Shop and Subscription all the way until the real F2P transition happened somewhere in 2011, almost 4 years later.
Again! The F2P transition did not happen until 2011!
The first Cash Shop was added via an expansion launchday stealth patch on Nov.18, 2008 !
I was there! I have been playing EverQuest 2 since 2004 up until around 2012-2013, before I finally gave up and moved on.
I have witnessed all of Smedley's monetizing Experiments.
Here's the archived Station Cash feedback thread on EQ2 old forums: http://web.archive.org/web/20090216145626/http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=438341
Awesome find! You gotta love the caching power of the internet! SOE might have deleted the old forums and replaced them with new, but it will always be on the internet.
That first response in that feedback thread just says it all. The exact sentiment of how many of us felt.
It really just shows the modus operandi of SOE at that time! No respect for their paying loyal customers at all! ZERO!
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
1. EA
2. Smed
3. McQuaid
4. Vogel
When you don't want the truth, you will make up your own truth.
What you all see is nothing compared to what he must have seen, heard and experienced while being with a company that grew From Verant to SOE and finally diminishing to Daybreak. I think he must have wisdom that comes from having been through so much with this industry. Pity that people are more apt to disparage from some personal vendetta against him but the industry can learn much from him especially a fledgling attempt into this genre.
If so I suspect Amazon will have set a budget to ensure that it doesn't stray from "keep it simple".
"going into arguments with idiots is a lost cause, it requires you to stoop down to their level and you can't win"
He really needs to find another line of work, because he does not seem to be able to do anything innovative that people like.
Hey, again, Smed is merely the greatest scapegoat in history, so the "NGE" isn't really his scarlet letter to wear. Why? It's quite well documented by devs and other team members that this was NOT Smed's decision. Even Smed said, at the time, it was a "mutual" decision between SOE and LucasArts, but that's bullshit. He's just a really good scapegoat because years later, despite there being a fuck ton of information to the contrary, people still think he was responsible for that debacle, lol. That being said, it's probably the reason he got this job. He's a good corporate guy who is magnetic (for shitstorms) and he's weight that can be shed if things go sideways and Amazon will come out smelling like roses because they just "made the best decision ever by firing him.", effectively giving them a second life. Do you know how much a company would pay for a second life?
Seriously, though, use the Internets and read articles published at the time versus what's available now from guys like Raph Koster. It's very enlightening.
Crazkanuk
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Aloha Mr Hand !
Aloha Mr Hand !