I don't see the comparision... It's not like people are saying they wont buy a game if it is recorded on Sony brand disks, or if the developer had a Sony laptop. The exact division of Sony people have a problem with, SOE, is co-producing this game. they will maintain the servers and provide other services... but the bottom line is, by buying this game i would be putting money in the Smed's pocket. I would be telling them through my subscription fees that I am OK with the way they treat their customers, and the licenses they ruin. I would be supporting a group of individuals I think personify everything wrong with the video game industry.
Originally posted by Vengeful II think they do make sense, if you understand that Taco Bell and KFC and are owned by the same company =P And that Corn Pops and Frosted Flakes are both Kellogs brand cereals. And likewise, there are different development teams, different lead designers, and whatnot working on each of SOE's games. I choose to judge them independently of one another. That's how one person can love EQ and hate SWG without having some sort of identity crisis =P
I think they do make sense, if you understand that Taco Bell and KFC and are owned by the same company =P And that Corn Pops and Frosted Flakes are both Kellogs brand cereals. And likewise, there are different development teams, different lead designers, and whatnot working on each of SOE's games. I choose to judge them independently of one another. That's how one person can love EQ and hate SWG without having some sort of identity crisis =P
Lying though, I don't quite get...I'm sure that at the time they said it, it was true, and it was what they legally could say.
Like with Vanguard, they told us that there were going to be Corpse Runs, which we now see as a half truth. It wasnt' that they lied before...I'm sure that it was true at the time, or that it was really all they could say without breaching their own NDA...
If every kellog product i bought was misrepresented,subpar,poisoned,etc for a long length of time i would boycott them as well. Same thing with fast foods, but most of them are independently owned or operated. You will get pretty consistant service/food but most all fast food chains have a few that blow. When i have one in my area that blows i avoid it.
In any event, there may be different teams working different expansions/games, but the overall experience ive had with all dealings $oe over a long period of time have been negative to the point i wont give them my business and i wont give my business to those who align with them.
As for the lying the two most recent before i left for good were for eq2. The game not releasing untill it was ready and frogluk quest being in game at release. Both were lies when they said them and they knew it.
People are just a bunch of whinners. If you guys had problem with $OE in the past and took you 6 years to realise, maybe your a little bit slow. I am from the vet SWG generation and I quit because their was too many whinners on the forum about everything, I want to be a Jedi so give us Holo, I do not want to grind it's too long give us a quest. My buff are not all the same......blah blah blah. So they are trying to listen to the majority. You don't want to play Vanguard, fine play something else, but I will sure give it a try. Their is no perfect company, all of them at one point will make some ppl hate them for some reason.
Look at Bush, everyone says they are against him but he gets reelected and ppl still give him is money, why don't you change country and go live somewhere else, Oh no you can't somewhere else might have something you will complain about.
I realise a long time ago that MMO are the type of game that will always change/evolve, that's the beauty of it. Sometimes you like the way it takes sometimes you don't. You don't like that, then go back to play on a console.
Personaly I play the game I like regardless who is making it as long as the game is good. When the game change in a way I don't like I change game and yes that piss me to see I put lots of my time I a game that change and I have to quit, but I move on.
Anger will guide you to the dark side, my young Padawan.
Get a life you freaking Gamer.....no no, you don't understand, I'm a Gamer, I have many lives!!
Get real, it took you 6 years to understandy ou didn't liked those product?!? gosh!! Eh what? SOE lied about EQII's release date and pushed it back? uhhh... I hope you weren't expecting Duke Nukem Manhattan when they announced it about some 10 years ago! 'cause it's about to release in a near future! If you are to be a gamer, then YOU have to know that games are almost all pushed back at least one time. If it's not being pushed back then you can say it's a subpar game beacause the devs won't be putting too much effort in fixing bugs and making the game that little bit better.
Guess what, I've been playing EQ from the start, SW:G and EQ2, through out all the times I required CS, I didn't had any problem with it. Peopels who complains about CS are isolated issues. It can happen you call at a moment where 120000 others peoples called at the same time, if you are being a jerk with the person at the other side, their attitude might be reflecting... if you can't understand someone, just ask to talk to someone else.
You claim SOE release patches before they are ready? why because one patch might bug one aspect of the game? come on, I mean... EVERY MMORPG has that problem... why? because when you apply data over date, there might be corruption that occurs, some files that didn't overwrote other files, an error in some comand line. If you think SoE patches stinks, then you didn,t played UO when it was released, it was the most hackable and bugged thing ever created for pc (yes it even beats windows in that aspect).
Guess what, I'm not a pro SoE and I wouldn't ditch any compagny because I've been insatisfied with something at some point, they've made. (Well ok, I boycott Rogers, but they charged my cell phone with 60$ and more of overfee every month, they were just basicly, legally stealing me, and guess what they even charged me even more because I broke my contract before the time!!! heck!!!)
I'm not trying to convince you to play Vanguard or to even consider SoE more then you already do, but I think you'd need to take a more mature approach about it. If SoE would be such a bad company, EverQuest wouldn't be the most succesful mmorpg of all time (well it's being beaten by WoW right now...)
By the way, it's not SoE that destroyed SW:G it's the players, back then everyone complained about they couldn't be jedi but the few that achived the feat. From the moment SoE got annoyed from beign asked daily by 200,000+ persons and said how you could be a jedi, then everything went haywire. I can say, seriously that the game was at it's best just before then. Yes the jedis were uberly strong, but there weren't much of them anyways, most classes were well balanced and there was lots of diversity through them and by peoples playing different stuff. But after that moment, peoples just rushed through levels to unlock the jedi character and SoE could only try to fix the havoc that was unleashed and as far as I'm concerned it's about the only failure of SoE through out it's 10+ years of existence.
I wonder if someone could respond to what is meant by "success"? (i.e. WoW is more successful than eq2, etc.) Are we talking # of subscribers, or are there more subjective attributes to it?
I'm relatively new to the mmorpg world; started playing on eq2, tried WoW & DAoC, but I really don't have that much to compare it to. I found WoW to be full of teenagers looking for toon-porn, and didn't see much challenge to the game itself, so I left. I've had a good time with eq2 so far, though I can see where the challenge/novelty may soon wear off, and so I'll probably move to a more challenging game. At this point, that will probably be Vanguard. And, heh, if I don't like it, I'll leave, right?
Customer service? I can't say that I've had a good experience with SoE. That said, I've got no serious problem with them, either; at least no more than with my cable company, and I like them a lot better than my cell phone company. I mean, I'm not going to send SoE a Christmas present or anything, but I'm not going to avoid Vanguard b/c SoE is "evil". If we want to talk evil, let's watch the 6 o'clock news. Don't we have bigger things to worry about in life?
But back to "success"... I'd appreciate it if folks would say something about what they mean by "success" as it pertains to a mmorpg, besides customer base/# of players.
Originally posted by Vendel Get real, it took you 6 years to understandy ou didn't liked those product?!? gosh!! Eh what? SOE lied about EQII's release date and pushed it back? uhhh... I hope you weren't expecting Duke Nukem Manhattan when they announced it about some 10 years ago! 'cause it's about to release in a near future! If you are to be a gamer, then YOU have to know that games are almost all pushed back at least one time. If it's not being pushed back then you can say it's a subpar game beacause the devs won't be putting too much effort in fixing bugs and making the game that little bit better. Guess what, I've been playing EQ from the start, SW:G and EQ2, through out all the times I required CS, I didn't had any problem with it. Peopels who complains about CS are isolated issues. It can happen you call at a moment where 120000 others peoples called at the same time, if you are being a jerk with the person at the other side, their attitude might be reflecting... if you can't understand someone, just ask to talk to someone else. You claim SOE release patches before they are ready? why because one patch might bug one aspect of the game? come on, I mean... EVERY MMORPG has that problem... why? because when you apply data over date, there might be corruption that occurs, some files that didn't overwrote other files, an error in some comand line. If you think SoE patches stinks, then you didn,t played UO when it was released, it was the most hackable and bugged thing ever created for pc (yes it even beats windows in that aspect). Guess what, I'm not a pro SoE and I wouldn't ditch any compagny because I've been insatisfied with something at some point, they've made. (Well ok, I boycott Rogers, but they charged my cell phone with 60$ and more of overfee every month, they were just basicly, legally stealing me, and guess what they even charged me even more because I broke my contract before the time!!! heck!!!) I'm not trying to convince you to play Vanguard or to even consider SoE more then you already do, but I think you'd need to take a more mature approach about it. If SoE would be such a bad company, EverQuest wouldn't be the most succesful mmorpg of all time (well it's being beaten by WoW right now...) By the way, it's not SoE that destroyed SW:G it's the players, back then everyone complained about they couldn't be jedi but the few that achived the feat. From the moment SoE got annoyed from beign asked daily by 200,000+ persons and said how you could be a jedi, then everything went haywire. I can say, seriously that the game was at it's best just before then. Yes the jedis were uberly strong, but there weren't much of them anyways, most classes were well balanced and there was lots of diversity through them and by peoples playing different stuff. But after that moment, peoples just rushed through levels to unlock the jedi character and SoE could only try to fix the havoc that was unleashed and as far as I'm concerned it's about the only failure of SoE through out it's 10+ years of existence.
Well no interest in doing a point by point breakdown because reading comprehension is obviously not your forte, but i will address a couple.
1. It didnt take me 6 years to realise i didnt like their products. I gave them 6 years to stop releasing expansions and games up to 6 months too early. I gave them 6 years to stop shady practices.
2. I didnt say $oe lied about the release date for eq2. They lied about not releasing it untill it was ready. They once again pushed out a game 6 months before it should have been. When you rework most of a games major mechanics/features like crafting,combat,classes,etc it was released too early. No a game doesnt have to be bug free or issue free, but the major things need to be solid.
3. eq1 is not the most successfull mmorg of all time even without wow. Even if it was that wouldnt mean $oe wasnt an unethical company.
4. Saying it wasnt $oe but the players that ruined swg is the stupidest thing ive seen writen in a long time lol.
Truthfully my first language is french, so it might be why my english isn't that good. At least I think I can get my point understood most of the time :P
To answer Renfeld, I'd say to claim one mmorpg to be successful is considering the amount of active subscription at it's peak, the longevity and perhaps the overall of active subscription. (Sometimes companies might claim they have millions and millions of subscription but this is considering both inactive and active subscription). Actually there's only a handful of mmorpg to have had over 1 million active subscription. Right now there is an estimated 12 millions peoples having an account on a game (without considering someone can subscribe to many mmorpgs at the same time).
We can easily say that WoW is the most succesful as of today, because at it hasn't reached it's peak and it boast a little over 6.5 millions active subscriptions (though it seems to be close to the peak).
The second most succesful mmorpg should be Lineage at it's peak it almost reached 3,5 millions active subscription (though the game came out only in the asian market).
Lineage 2 would be the 3rd most succesful game, at it's peak it boasted a little over 2 millions active suscription, but this game is loosing subscription almost at the same pace it gained them.
I'd say Everquest could be consired ex-equo with Lineage 2, while it never had as much active subscription (we could easily say that Everquest didn't had the chance to enjoy the asian market and it's where there's the most players). At it's peak there has been a little over 500,000 active subscriptions, but the game is one of the longest standing mmorpg (since january 99), the only oldest mmorpg that had more success was Lineage.
Perhaps I was wrong when I said that Everquest was the most popular, but unlike WoW or Lineage, it wasn't sold in asian territory, which would have boasted it's subscriptions by a few millions. As far as, being sold only in america, no games comes close to Everquest in active subscription (well SW:G was close at some point). While not being the most succesful as I first claimed, it's still in the top list.
As for the rework of the mechanics of an mmorpg, most if not all of them had there system reworked at some point and not only SoE products. Dungeon and Dragon Online has some features reworked and it hasn,t been out a year yet, Turbine said there wouldn't be pvp at any point, did they lie by adding it? perhaps, but they had to deal with the competition and the custumer demands also, there was alot of peoples wanting to play it, the lack of stuff to do and the fact that most games in competition with it has pvp made it so they finally made a patch with pvp in it. through out all the time I played DAoC, there was about 3 or 4 major updates, even WoW had one or two as of yet. UO had many many many major updates before it became the game it is right now...
In the gaming industry and mostly in the mmorpg genre, you can't really say what will be going inside the game and what will not make it. Ify ou have 1 million customers and almost all of them (let's say three quarter of them) wants one aspect in the game, will you add it? or you'll overlook them and hope not too loose to much of those customer in favor of one of your competitor?
Also, EQ2 had some major rework, because alot of players were coming from WoW and though that the game was too hard and that it wasn,t enough like WoW. EQ2 is the primary competitor of WoW and it doesn't even come close to it (right now it doesn't even have 200,000 active subscriptions), so it's just about marketing plans and hoping to gain more shares of the market.
Did you read the forums back then when peoples kept complaining about how they could become a jedi? because almost no one figured out they needed to have one character with 3 class maxed to unlock the jedi character slot? I bet the CS was filled with whinner who wanted to become jedi. When peoples realized jedi were too powerful compared to other players, they started whinning that jedis were too strong, so SOE tried to do something about it and it only screwed the game even more. But on the other hand if Sony wouldn't have told peoples how to play a jedi, there wouldn't have been that much for a while (eventually the base customers, which is about 3/4 of teh subscriptions after 2 years will have the jedi character). So yes the players have a share of the fault in SW:G troubles
The player base also ruined DAoC chance to shine over it's competitor, because back then, it was the most innovative mmorpg that came out. But the players kept whinning about this class being to strong over that one and this class being the worst, so for about 2 years or so, the only thing Mythic did as patches was trying to put the classes on the same level. They didn't spend much time in putting new content (new quests or whats not) the only addition really was that underground dungeon... So yes the player base can ruin a game.
But its not because of quality, its because of the way they like to squeeze every cent out of a game and then give nada back.
EQ was an excellent game. EQ2 is...a fairly good game.. my main problem with eq2 is the subscription system. Don't have a credit card? Bye...
$oe really do go overboard with makin dolla from gaming, they make chinese farmers look cool.
Ms.. their games are all polished to an extent thats blinding. Whilst they may have some issues with bugs... all games do these days. And patching..
What i don't want in Vanguard is CC only subscriptions, milking the market or auctions and definately a better patching system than wow offers.
But since noone ever listens to what the games want... i guess Vanguard will go kinda up abit at the start.. then people will ook and see and if it sucks the game will drop dead on its face. Just like EQ2 did, Just like SWG did.. the problem with SWG is noone realised it was dead until it was blatently obvious. imo swg was dead 2 weeks before release, when they added so much broken content the game was unplayable. Although it did improve slightly... it never got anything as good as it was mid beta. Eq2 did improve and is currectly better than it was on release...but its dead too. Server populations are so low you're lucky to see a dozen people in a single week. Understandable in a universe the size of eve.. but not in a standard mmo.
Another problem we have today is the diversity of games available. Theres literally hundreds of mmos now and 90% of them are pretty trash.
Can count the good ones... I've played Uo, Doac, Ac, Eq, Eq2, Ac2, Sor, Horizons, Lineage2, Wow, Eve, Mankind, Planetside, SWG, A&Beyond...think thats about it. I don't see much more on the horizon..
Wow... i don't expect the expansion to anygood really... wow addins haven't been particularly great. Tabula Rasa.. may or may not be fun. Time will tell. Vanguard...I'll look when its released.. Warhammer... i'll buy this, unless the graphics change abrubtly, although the admission to rejoining goa is a bad bad thing...
And of course.. Battlefield 2140... looks awesome. I'll definately be buying this. Probably more rpg in fps games anyway..
Life is about Living, Sleep is about Dreaming, Games are about Strategy!
Thanks, Vendel. That was helpful... especially the background to the SWG crash that everyone keeps mentioning. I never played it, so I had no clue! :-)
While I can't judge how much SOE messed up EQ1, if that's the reason for turning your back on Vanguard it would not be a good one. Seem a lot of the reputation SOE has comes from how they developed MMORPGs and the in-game CS. The agreement between Sigil and SOE is such that Sigil has complete control over the Development handles in-game CS. SOE is there to co-publish, host and provide techinical support. I don't know that many parties that handle those areas better. Certainly SOE has a better track record than Microsoft in those areas.
Originally posted by chlaos SOE sucks donkey balls, and they will take over this game and ruin it. Sorry, thats just the way it is. I wish it wasnt so, but it is......
I know, another comment from an “X” SWG Player and who knows if anyone from Vangard really reads any of this but here it is.
The problem that I have with that $oE company is that no matter what commitment they make to the community, they don’t care about anything but the mighty dollar. My view comes from going to the second SWG fan fest, which was just after the CU. I paid for plane tickets a hotel room and $100 to attend a focus group. So after a full weekend of talking to people that seemed to be “developers”, they took notes, told us about tons of changes that where going to come online, and the best part for me was that I was a master musician, creature handler. Both of the focus group leaders told us about some amazing changes that were on the way, took notes, and held people late to get more details. Six months after that my character was eliminated from the game. In the six months not a single change from those groups where added to the game.
Now, I know that the designers of Vangard feel that they have a solid contract with $oE but due to my experience with the Fan Fest and the way that $oE can simply lie to there community, I just can’t commit to another game that looks amazing and then pulls the rug out from under me. I just hope that the community that forms Vangard’s world don’t end up left out in the wind when $oE decides that its spending to much money on a game that’s not making enough return to justify the contract, fires all the lead dev’s and dumbs up the game to a point that it can be run by high school students on laptops……..
Ahh SOE =/ my.... worst enamy. See im a SWG refuge So i refuse use their product because they made the worst mistake, taking many paying customers showimg them what a change is going be be like if they put it in. Then they read the up roar and dislike to there idea. Then take the customers and say your going to like this change. But i wish vanguard well and understand that SOE is not making the game its self. So in my eyes theres hope. And possibly a bright light at the end of the tunnel
Well... what can be said that hasn't been already said, multiple times, on this thread. Like Soundnlit, I went to the FanFest, sat through the 'Focus Group' sessions, listened to their reasons, opinions and promises. Left the FanFest hopeful that the company was actually listening to what their customers were saying. Well, that wasn't the case...
Characters, my own and many other's, which we had been 'grown and molded' to what we envisioned them to be, were completely and utterly destroyed in concept, and practice, on the day the NGE went live. Two days later I cancelled my account. I stayed through the multiple Jedi revisions, the Combat Upgrade, but the NGE was the last straw. Having sat with them during the FanFest, having 'trusted' them to make good on their promises, I expected a certain amount of respect from the company which I had help support for 5 years.
I say SOE disrespected me and many others when without warning, they simply eliminated the original game and created a new one which 'kinda' looked like it. A game where most of our efforts and invested time, were thrown away, and into the garbage. People like Soundnlit, Master Musicians/Master Creature Handlers, who's characters completely disappeared in concept...
I've been looking forward to Vanguard for many months now, and the news that SOE was again in ontrol of what I considered a great game, just eliminated any hope of finding a niche in the new game to enjoy. I refuse to pay another cent to SOE... will I? Only time will tell. If Vanguard is as great a game as we all hope, some of us might put away our dislike of SOE to try it out. Will I continue to play the game? No... Not untill SOE has nothing to do with it. Not holding my breath...
Ahh.... all the unintelligent, immature posts are now on one single, easily ignored thread . I can understand people stating their opinion, but when people keep crying about the same dumb crap over and over for months, it gets a little old. Nice job mmorpg in making the forums a more friendly place for people who would like to learn more about the game's features .
Originally posted by chlaos SOE sucks donkey balls, and they will take over this game and ruin it. Sorry, thats just the way it is. I wish it wasnt so, but it is......
I see it is jump on the HATE SOE bandwagon again. Oh yay.
As someone else said, thank god all this is on one thread, which I will no longer bother to read.
I hate somore than anyone, but saying that microsoft saw something they didnt like, I am really glad because everybody knows microsoft attemps with mmorpgs.
Second for those people, you all really need to check that SIGIL is not the only company that decided to cancel the agreetment with microsoft. Why? first due creative issue, but the main reason was, as microsoft said, Xbox is the priority... They said that.
I really like what I see in this video, is a little about aventuring.
I said I'd never buy another SOE game so here I am venting...
Thank the Vangaurd developers that they didn't sell out completely. If development had switched to SOE I doubt I'd seriously look at this game. Happy day marketing is about the ONLY thing SOE is good for.
I wont look at this game since I heard Soe is involved soe are losers when it comes to customer satisfaction and video games look at almighty eq2. Look what they did to everquest they messed it up and everytime they did we had to pay for it i lost tons stuff from their roll back and this stuff i had for 7 years. I deleted all my toons and said heck with it. You all should do the same why make them losers rich. After your everquest career look what it has done for you and tell me it was worth it.
Comments
I don't see the comparision... It's not like people are saying they wont buy a game if it is recorded on Sony brand disks, or if the developer had a Sony laptop. The exact division of Sony people have a problem with, SOE, is co-producing this game. they will maintain the servers and provide other services... but the bottom line is, by buying this game i would be putting money in the Smed's pocket. I would be telling them through my subscription fees that I am OK with the way they treat their customers, and the licenses they ruin. I would be supporting a group of individuals I think personify everything wrong with the video game industry.
-----Zero Punctuation Eve Online Review-----
Lying though, I don't quite get...I'm sure that at the time they said it, it was true, and it was what they legally could say.
Like with Vanguard, they told us that there were going to be Corpse Runs, which we now see as a half truth. It wasnt' that they lied before...I'm sure that it was true at the time, or that it was really all they could say without breaching their own NDA...
If every kellog product i bought was misrepresented,subpar,poisoned,etc for a long length of time i would boycott them as well. Same thing with fast foods, but most of them are independently owned or operated. You will get pretty consistant service/food but most all fast food chains have a few that blow. When i have one in my area that blows i avoid it.
In any event, there may be different teams working different expansions/games, but the overall experience ive had with all dealings $oe over a long period of time have been negative to the point i wont give them my business and i wont give my business to those who align with them.
As for the lying the two most recent before i left for good were for eq2. The game not releasing untill it was ready and frogluk quest being in game at release. Both were lies when they said them and they knew it.
Look at Bush, everyone says they are against him but he gets reelected and ppl still give him is money, why don't you change country and go live somewhere else, Oh no you can't somewhere else might have something you will complain about.
I realise a long time ago that MMO are the type of game that will always change/evolve, that's the beauty of it. Sometimes you like the way it takes sometimes you don't. You don't like that, then go back to play on a console.
Personaly I play the game I like regardless who is making it as long as the game is good. When the game change in a way I don't like I change game and yes that piss me to see I put lots of my time I a game that change and I have to quit, but I move on.
Anger will guide you to the dark side, my young Padawan.
Get a life you freaking Gamer.....no no, you don't understand, I'm a Gamer, I have many lives!!
Get real, it took you 6 years to understandy ou didn't liked those product?!? gosh!! Eh what? SOE lied about EQII's release date and pushed it back? uhhh... I hope you weren't expecting Duke Nukem Manhattan when they announced it about some 10 years ago! 'cause it's about to release in a near future! If you are to be a gamer, then YOU have to know that games are almost all pushed back at least one time. If it's not being pushed back then you can say it's a subpar game beacause the devs won't be putting too much effort in fixing bugs and making the game that little bit better.
Guess what, I've been playing EQ from the start, SW:G and EQ2, through out all the times I required CS, I didn't had any problem with it. Peopels who complains about CS are isolated issues. It can happen you call at a moment where 120000 others peoples called at the same time, if you are being a jerk with the person at the other side, their attitude might be reflecting... if you can't understand someone, just ask to talk to someone else.
You claim SOE release patches before they are ready? why because one patch might bug one aspect of the game? come on, I mean... EVERY MMORPG has that problem... why? because when you apply data over date, there might be corruption that occurs, some files that didn't overwrote other files, an error in some comand line. If you think SoE patches stinks, then you didn,t played UO when it was released, it was the most hackable and bugged thing ever created for pc (yes it even beats windows in that aspect).
Guess what, I'm not a pro SoE and I wouldn't ditch any compagny because I've been insatisfied with something at some point, they've made. (Well ok, I boycott Rogers, but they charged my cell phone with 60$ and more of overfee every month, they were just basicly, legally stealing me, and guess what they even charged me even more because I broke my contract before the time!!! heck!!!)
I'm not trying to convince you to play Vanguard or to even consider SoE more then you already do, but I think you'd need to take a more mature approach about it. If SoE would be such a bad company, EverQuest wouldn't be the most succesful mmorpg of all time (well it's being beaten by WoW right now...)
By the way, it's not SoE that destroyed SW:G it's the players, back then everyone complained about they couldn't be jedi but the few that achived the feat. From the moment SoE got annoyed from beign asked daily by 200,000+ persons and said how you could be a jedi, then everything went haywire. I can say, seriously that the game was at it's best just before then. Yes the jedis were uberly strong, but there weren't much of them anyways, most classes were well balanced and there was lots of diversity through them and by peoples playing different stuff. But after that moment, peoples just rushed through levels to unlock the jedi character and SoE could only try to fix the havoc that was unleashed and as far as I'm concerned it's about the only failure of SoE through out it's 10+ years of existence.
I wonder if someone could respond to what is meant by "success"? (i.e. WoW is more successful than eq2, etc.) Are we talking # of subscribers, or are there more subjective attributes to it?
I'm relatively new to the mmorpg world; started playing on eq2, tried WoW & DAoC, but I really don't have that much to compare it to. I found WoW to be full of teenagers looking for toon-porn, and didn't see much challenge to the game itself, so I left. I've had a good time with eq2 so far, though I can see where the challenge/novelty may soon wear off, and so I'll probably move to a more challenging game. At this point, that will probably be Vanguard. And, heh, if I don't like it, I'll leave, right?
Customer service? I can't say that I've had a good experience with SoE. That said, I've got no serious problem with them, either; at least no more than with my cable company, and I like them a lot better than my cell phone company. I mean, I'm not going to send SoE a Christmas present or anything, but I'm not going to avoid Vanguard b/c SoE is "evil". If we want to talk evil, let's watch the 6 o'clock news. Don't we have bigger things to worry about in life?
But back to "success"... I'd appreciate it if folks would say something about what they mean by "success" as it pertains to a mmorpg, besides customer base/# of players.
Well no interest in doing a point by point breakdown because reading comprehension is obviously not your forte, but i will address a couple.
1. It didnt take me 6 years to realise i didnt like their products. I gave them 6 years to stop releasing expansions and games up to 6 months too early. I gave them 6 years to stop shady practices.
2. I didnt say $oe lied about the release date for eq2. They lied about not releasing it untill it was ready. They once again pushed out a game 6 months before it should have been. When you rework most of a games major mechanics/features like crafting,combat,classes,etc it was released too early. No a game doesnt have to be bug free or issue free, but the major things need to be solid.
3. eq1 is not the most successfull mmorg of all time even without wow. Even if it was that wouldnt mean $oe wasnt an unethical company.
4. Saying it wasnt $oe but the players that ruined swg is the stupidest thing ive seen writen in a long time lol.
Truthfully my first language is french, so it might be why my english isn't that good. At least I think I can get my point understood most of the time :P
To answer Renfeld, I'd say to claim one mmorpg to be successful is considering the amount of active subscription at it's peak, the longevity and perhaps the overall of active subscription. (Sometimes companies might claim they have millions and millions of subscription but this is considering both inactive and active subscription). Actually there's only a handful of mmorpg to have had over 1 million active subscription. Right now there is an estimated 12 millions peoples having an account on a game (without considering someone can subscribe to many mmorpgs at the same time).
We can easily say that WoW is the most succesful as of today, because at it hasn't reached it's peak and it boast a little over 6.5 millions active subscriptions (though it seems to be close to the peak).
The second most succesful mmorpg should be Lineage at it's peak it almost reached 3,5 millions active subscription (though the game came out only in the asian market).
Lineage 2 would be the 3rd most succesful game, at it's peak it boasted a little over 2 millions active suscription, but this game is loosing subscription almost at the same pace it gained them.
I'd say Everquest could be consired ex-equo with Lineage 2, while it never had as much active subscription (we could easily say that Everquest didn't had the chance to enjoy the asian market and it's where there's the most players). At it's peak there has been a little over 500,000 active subscriptions, but the game is one of the longest standing mmorpg (since january 99), the only oldest mmorpg that had more success was Lineage.
Perhaps I was wrong when I said that Everquest was the most popular, but unlike WoW or Lineage, it wasn't sold in asian territory, which would have boasted it's subscriptions by a few millions. As far as, being sold only in america, no games comes close to Everquest in active subscription (well SW:G was close at some point). While not being the most succesful as I first claimed, it's still in the top list.
As for the rework of the mechanics of an mmorpg, most if not all of them had there system reworked at some point and not only SoE products. Dungeon and Dragon Online has some features reworked and it hasn,t been out a year yet, Turbine said there wouldn't be pvp at any point, did they lie by adding it? perhaps, but they had to deal with the competition and the custumer demands also, there was alot of peoples wanting to play it, the lack of stuff to do and the fact that most games in competition with it has pvp made it so they finally made a patch with pvp in it. through out all the time I played DAoC, there was about 3 or 4 major updates, even WoW had one or two as of yet. UO had many many many major updates before it became the game it is right now...
In the gaming industry and mostly in the mmorpg genre, you can't really say what will be going inside the game and what will not make it. Ify ou have 1 million customers and almost all of them (let's say three quarter of them) wants one aspect in the game, will you add it? or you'll overlook them and hope not too loose to much of those customer in favor of one of your competitor?
Also, EQ2 had some major rework, because alot of players were coming from WoW and though that the game was too hard and that it wasn,t enough like WoW. EQ2 is the primary competitor of WoW and it doesn't even come close to it (right now it doesn't even have 200,000 active subscriptions), so it's just about marketing plans and hoping to gain more shares of the market.
Did you read the forums back then when peoples kept complaining about how they could become a jedi? because almost no one figured out they needed to have one character with 3 class maxed to unlock the jedi character slot? I bet the CS was filled with whinner who wanted to become jedi. When peoples realized jedi were too powerful compared to other players, they started whinning that jedis were too strong, so SOE tried to do something about it and it only screwed the game even more. But on the other hand if Sony wouldn't have told peoples how to play a jedi, there wouldn't have been that much for a while (eventually the base customers, which is about 3/4 of teh subscriptions after 2 years will have the jedi character). So yes the players have a share of the fault in SW:G troubles
The player base also ruined DAoC chance to shine over it's competitor, because back then, it was the most innovative mmorpg that came out. But the players kept whinning about this class being to strong over that one and this class being the worst, so for about 2 years or so, the only thing Mythic did as patches was trying to put the classes on the same level. They didn't spend much time in putting new content (new quests or whats not) the only addition really was that underground dungeon... So yes the player base can ruin a game.
don't like microsoft. like soe even less.
But its not because of quality, its because of the way they like to squeeze every cent out of a game and then give nada back.
EQ was an excellent game.
EQ2 is...a fairly good game.. my main problem with eq2 is the subscription system. Don't have a credit card? Bye...
$oe really do go overboard with makin dolla from gaming, they make chinese farmers look cool.
Ms.. their games are all polished to an extent thats blinding. Whilst they may have some issues with bugs... all games do these days. And patching..
What i don't want in Vanguard is CC only subscriptions, milking the market or auctions and definately a better patching system than wow offers.
But since noone ever listens to what the games want... i guess Vanguard will go kinda up abit at the start.. then people will ook and see and if it sucks the game will drop dead on its face. Just like EQ2 did, Just like SWG did.. the problem with SWG is noone realised it was dead until it was blatently obvious. imo swg was dead 2 weeks before release, when they added so much broken content the game was unplayable. Although it did improve slightly... it never got anything as good as it was mid beta. Eq2 did improve and is currectly better than it was on release...but its dead too. Server populations are so low you're lucky to see a dozen people in a single week. Understandable in a universe the size of eve.. but not in a standard mmo.
Another problem we have today is the diversity of games available. Theres literally hundreds of mmos now and 90% of them are pretty trash.
Can count the good ones... I've played Uo, Doac, Ac, Eq, Eq2, Ac2, Sor, Horizons, Lineage2, Wow, Eve, Mankind, Planetside, SWG, A&Beyond...think thats about it. I don't see much more on the horizon..
Wow... i don't expect the expansion to anygood really... wow addins haven't been particularly great.
Tabula Rasa.. may or may not be fun. Time will tell.
Vanguard...I'll look when its released..
Warhammer... i'll buy this, unless the graphics change abrubtly, although the admission to rejoining goa is a bad bad thing...
And of course.. Battlefield 2140... looks awesome. I'll definately be buying this. Probably more rpg in fps games anyway..
Life is about Living, Sleep is about Dreaming, Games are about Strategy!
---------------------------
Former EQ1 Rallos Zek (PvP)
Ascendant Chronei Immortal of Rallos Zek
(Now @ Prexus)
/sigh
I have had great customer service off SoE, I have had terrible customer service off SoE...
the same as I have had off *anyone*.
jezuz... think beyond consumer fashion for a second and look at the facts yes?
Bunch of f**kin sheep.
"The man who exchanges Liberty for Iconic classes is a fool deserving of neither." - Me and Ben Franklin
Like i say, bunch of f**kin sheep.
original thought is good!
I know, another comment from an “X” SWG Player and who knows if anyone from Vangard really reads any of this but here it is.
The problem that I have with that $oE company is that no matter what commitment they make to the community, they don’t care about anything but the mighty dollar. My view comes from going to the second SWG fan fest, which was just after the CU. I paid for plane tickets a hotel room and $100 to attend a focus group. So after a full weekend of talking to people that seemed to be “developers”, they took notes, told us about tons of changes that where going to come online, and the best part for me was that I was a master musician, creature handler. Both of the focus group leaders told us about some amazing changes that were on the way, took notes, and held people late to get more details. Six months after that my character was eliminated from the game. In the six months not a single change from those groups where added to the game.
Now, I know that the designers of Vangard feel that they have a solid contract with $oE but due to my experience with the Fan Fest and the way that $oE can simply lie to there community, I just can’t commit to another game that looks amazing and then pulls the rug out from under me. I just hope that the community that forms Vangard’s world don’t end up left out in the wind when $oE decides that its spending to much money on a game that’s not making enough return to justify the contract, fires all the lead dev’s and dumbs up the game to a point that it can be run by high school students on laptops……..
Ahh SOE =/ my.... worst enamy. See im a SWG refuge So i refuse use their product because they made the worst mistake, taking many paying customers showimg them what a change is going be be like if they put it in. Then they read the up roar and dislike to there idea. Then take the customers and say your going to like this change. But i wish vanguard well and understand that SOE is not making the game its self. So in my eyes theres hope. And possibly a bright light at the end of the tunnel
Well... what can be said that hasn't been already said, multiple times, on this thread. Like Soundnlit, I went to the FanFest, sat through the 'Focus Group' sessions, listened to their reasons, opinions and promises. Left the FanFest hopeful that the company was actually listening to what their customers were saying. Well, that wasn't the case...
Characters, my own and many other's, which we had been 'grown and molded' to what we envisioned them to be, were completely and utterly destroyed in concept, and practice, on the day the NGE went live. Two days later I cancelled my account. I stayed through the multiple Jedi revisions, the Combat Upgrade, but the NGE was the last straw. Having sat with them during the FanFest, having 'trusted' them to make good on their promises, I expected a certain amount of respect from the company which I had help support for 5 years.
I say SOE disrespected me and many others when without warning, they simply eliminated the original game and created a new one which 'kinda' looked like it. A game where most of our efforts and invested time, were thrown away, and into the garbage. People like Soundnlit, Master Musicians/Master Creature Handlers, who's characters completely disappeared in concept...
I've been looking forward to Vanguard for many months now, and the news that SOE was again in ontrol of what I considered a great game, just eliminated any hope of finding a niche in the new game to enjoy. I refuse to pay another cent to SOE... will I? Only time will tell. If Vanguard is as great a game as we all hope, some of us might put away our dislike of SOE to try it out. Will I continue to play the game? No... Not untill SOE has nothing to do with it. Not holding my breath...
I do wish Sigil and their team good luck.
I see it is jump on the HATE SOE bandwagon again. Oh yay.
As someone else said, thank god all this is on one thread, which I will no longer bother to read.
I hate somore than anyone, but saying that microsoft saw something they didnt like, I am really glad because everybody knows microsoft attemps with mmorpgs.
Second for those
people, you all really need to check that SIGIL is not the only company that decided to cancel the agreetment with microsoft. Why? first due creative issue, but the main reason was, as microsoft said, Xbox is the priority... They said that.
I really like what I see in this video, is a little about aventuring.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4224321741062099311&q=Vanguard%3A+Saga+of+Heroes
This game just get better and better.
Dimitrio Darkblade
Founder Leader of Vitae Essentia
http://www.veguild.org
I really have high hopes for this game. I just hope SOE doesn't SWG Vangaurd up..
Which FF Character Are You?
I said I'd never buy another SOE game so here I am venting...
Thank the Vangaurd developers that they didn't sell out completely. If development had switched to SOE I doubt I'd seriously look at this game. Happy day marketing is about the ONLY thing SOE is good for.
I feel much better now. Thank you vent thread.