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Do you Really Hate? What is Your Definition? Thanks Donjn
Bronks
Member Posts: 222
<Disclaimer>
I am not a Sony employee, I am not related to anyone at Sony and I do not own shares with Sony.
I am truly entertained every time I read a thread where someone hates everything Sony stands for. Whether a player can never forgive Sony for what happened to SWG, or a player cannot forget what Smedley has to say about issue X, players that dislike Sony REALLY dislike Sony.
Tell me why.
Please enlighten me as to what Sony did to you personally to make you hate them. Did Sony make you so addicted to Everquest back in the day that you lost your job or your spouse? (Because I'd understand that)
Did your Sony PS3 start a fire and burn your uninsured house down? (Because I'd understand that)
Were you a doctor in SWG who sold buffs for credits that you sold for real world money so you could pay back the mafia when the NGE came about and the mafia broke both your legs as a result? (Because again, I would understand that)
I don't understand how someone can HATE a company. Lets think about this for a second...
Hate is a strong word.
I hate the bastard that poisoned my dog with anti-freeze when I was a kid.
I hate the asshole that was drinking and driving and hit my kid brother while he was biking home (he's fine now).
I hate the people that believe they are better than someone else because of background, race, color. etc.
I don't however, hate my former employer that fired me after my wife gave birth to our second child. I turned my life around and started a successful business that gives me tons of free time so being fired was about the best thing to happen to me.
I don't hate Sony for ruining SWG... it's probably because I unplugged from the game that I met my wife in the first place.
I don't hate Sony for anything they have done.
They made decisions just like you and I make every single day. The only thing is, their decisions affect a whole lot more people than my (or your) decision on what to make for supper. Even their large-scale decision to change SWG (for example)... how could this have possibly negatively affected your lives? I would understand if you were mad because the CU/NGE caused countless devs and support staff to loose their jobs, but that is not what I read in the "Hate SOE" posts.
You hate-filled players have so much energy available to you that you can afford to spare some on hating a game company? SERIOUSLY?!? Do you go to bed hating SOE and wake up hating SOE and dreaming about destroying SOE in-between? There is nothing better going on in your life that you can focus some of that energy towards? How about getting a girlfriend or buying a pet or having kids? There must be something that your powers of negativity can be used towards to increase your personal joy.
If not, I truly feel sorry for you. Keep hating a company. I'll keep enjoying my Vanguard and EQ2...
Maybe you can get some of the hatred out by discussing here. I would really love to know what Sony did to affect your life in such a way that you have to hate a company and everything they will do in the future.
Comments
sony never did anything to me
SOE just seems to hash out MMORPGs of lower quality. EQ, EQ2, Vanguard are all decent quality MMOs, but the others on their list are quite horrible. I guess honestly the only few things I hold a grudge against SOE for is the fact they just let Planetside die, if they added actual loot and more content sooner I feel it would be among the top MMO games out there. I guess the other would be nerfing certain things ages ago in SWG. Other than that, I still play their products. Enjoying myself in EQ2 and EQ.
I wouldn't say I hate them, though I am very dissapointed in them. They pick money over community and game. $OE will never forget what happend to their MMO.
It's extremely easy to hate SOE for what they did, and just because people post about it on these, or any other forums, doesn't mean the hate has consumed their life. Would you be making this same post if I had purchased a car from Kia, it didn't work well, so I said, "I'm never going to buy a Kia ever again, and I don't like the company." Mu suspicion is that you would not.
The fact of the matter is, Sony ruined something that a lot of people enjoyed because they're a ridiculous company. The fact that myself, and others, don't really want to be associated with a company that will screw over it's player base doesn't make us hate-filled or unreasonable, and I resent the suggestion to the contrary. Our reaction, I feel, is something a rational human being would do if they were abused by a company. It's a personal choice to not associate with a company that has treated us poorly in the past, and, in our eyes, they can't do anything that would redeem themselves in our eyes. It's our personal choice to feel that way, but, once again, that doesn't mean we are obsessed with the notion of SOE or anything of that nature.
I find it rather amusing that you berate the people on these forums for what you deem as wasting their energy ranting about SOE, and then, in the same breath, write an entire forum post where you admit to not only reading all those posts, but then go on to make a post about how much you disagree with those posts. If there is something better that all of these "hate-filled players" can be spending their energy on, doesn't that make it doubly true for people that post about posts made by the hate-filled players?
Perhaps you too, can use this thread as a discussion forum for how to better use your energy.
About the money over community, isn't the same true of WoW?
And I know everyone hates WoW too, and I dislike the pop culture sellout bandwagon aspect of it as well, but I don't hate Blizzard.
True but Blizzard seem to be better at this than SOE.
Another great example of Moore's Law. Give people access to that much space (developers and users alike) and they'll find uses for it that you can never imagine. "640K ought to be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates 1981
Semper, I'm starting (maybe) to understand some of these complaints. But to compare purchasing a video game to purchasing a $15,000+ SUV is flawed logic. On the contrary, a video game though it has less of a financial investment than a Kia, it does have a significant emotional investment that is unlike one with a car.
I'm not trying to hate on you, I am just trying to keep it realistic.
However, if a company really screwed up one of my games, I'd be pissed too.
(Say if Bethesda effs up Fallout 3, I'll be so pissed I might commit homicide. I don't seem them doing that though.)
In principal the two things are the same. You buy or pay for something, and your experience with the purchased item ends up leaving a bad taste in your mouth. If you don't like the car analogy, feel free to use a cell phone, or a meal at a restaurant, the same principal applies.
I think, in terms of development, SOE has mostly gotten its act together. The recent EQ2 stuff has been good. They actually have made Vanguard relatively playable. I also wouldn't say that SOE values money over games. SOE has kept a lot of very shitty games on life support, with no real sign of closing them down.
Meanwhile, NCSoft gave AA the axe. I don't even need to mention how many games EA has killed. Looking at SOE's shittier titles, most of those games are still getting developed, too, even if the entire playerbase is five morons RP'ing stupidly around a phone booth (you ___ fans out there know what I'm talking about). On the contrary, one of the huge flaws of TR is that development for it hasn't been robust enough since launch.
That said, SOE is still a bit of a villain. It does a lot of things wrong. The things it does right, it usually does in a mediocre way. EQ2 is a good game, maybe a great game, but it's not breaking any ground. There's nothing very unique about it. Other, much shittier games have a unique character of their own that EQ2 honestly lacks.
If you want to know the source of the real hate, though, it basically comes from two places.
1. Customer service. I'll give you an example. With most companies, you go to their web site and click cancel when you don't want to play anymore. Done. Not with SOE, though. Here is the process of unsub'ing to a SOE title.
a. Cancel via the web. Browser will show confirmation of cancellation. Roll 1d20.
b. If result is lower than 11, cancellation has secretly failed. You are billed again.
c. Call customer service on the phone. They apologize and confirm that your account has now been canceled. Roll 1d20.
d. If result is lower than 20, cancellation has secretly failed. You are billed again.
e. Repeat steps a-d 3 times.
f. Have CC company issue a chargeback. Your account is now banned from that game. You will have to call customer service again to get your account unbanned if you want to play again.
You probably think this is a joke or an exaggeration, but this exact thing has happened to me, and I guarantee you, for every dozen people that read this post from this community, at least one will have had this exact experience as well.
2. SWG. Before NGE, SWG was a buggy mess that was rapidly bleeding players. The forums were filled with complaints and cries to fix the game's problems. Instead, each patch added new problems. The veterans stuck it out, though. Underneath SWG's ugly face was a gem with serious potential and a lot of charm to players who could tolerate its shortcomings. After NGE, SWG was simply a buggy, unplayable mess. I can't comprehend the logic behind NGE, and I'm not even a SWG fan. I think it was something like this:
"Captain, the ship is sinking! We have to do something!"
"What? Why is the ship sinking?"
"There's a huge hole in the side, sir."
"You know how we handle holes, don't you, ensign?"
"Sir, I don't think that's the best id . . ."
"Shut up! We're going to blow it up! Get all of our engineers down there with as many explosives as they can carry. Once we blow that hole to kingdom come, the ship will be saved . . . yes . . ."
The problem with the OP's post is a simple inability to view the issue from others perspectives.
Just because the OP didnt have any issues with SOE doesn't mean others experiences are any less valid.
I hate SOE because they take good games and run them into the ground, such as planetside. They cut corners and produce many shoddy games.
I don't have the energy to go into a big long spill. If you don't get it by now then your world is just to small to understand. Your think it''s funny people feel the way they do about Sony, I feel that it's sad people can't understand how supporting con artists as a buisness hurts us all. Not just as players of games but as consumers, and our societal ethical standards.
I understand the principle fine, and with a restaurant, cell phone, or even a car, your point stands in that it's understandable to dislike the company that produced a poor product. The flipside is that with any of those examples, few people go to website forums and spew spiteful rhetoric about said company in droves.
To cecede to your point a bit, people are like this with films. Uwe Boll has been criticized as much as maybe anything on the net. I understand that about as little as I understand this. Boll is definitely a crappy filmmaker but I don't spend my time hating on him or Michael Bay (whose films I particularly despise) like some. It's a craze I don't comprehend very well.
To me, if you enjoy art, then enjoy it. If you hate it, then don't.
That being said to have a game like SWG that you've already invested time, money, emotion, etc. be ruined after you've experienced its greatness, and never be able to experience again. Well that sucks.
See? A simple discussion thread cannot occur without someone taking offense and beginning to sling mud. Let me understand (because I truly want to understand). Are you so high on moral ethics that you will intentionally pay more for a game from one store because you don't believe in the ethics of the cheaper selling store? If Walmart has something for $20 cheaper than Gamestop, do you still buy from Gamestop?
(It should be noted that Walmart uses scare tactics to get what it wants from its suppliers and has intentionally shut down may supply companies (particularly in America) that would not offer their goods to Walmart at 'rollback' prices.)
I fully understand being mad. I am mad at SOE for ruining SWG but I internallize my feelings. I am mad at SOE for what has become of EQ1 and MXO. As I stated above, the people that dislike sony REALLY dislike sony and I find it strange to keep hanging on to that anger. And the hatemongers have no problem hijacking innocent treads by people (both the next generation of MMO players and old-school MMO players alike) who couldn't care what Sony did to EQ, or SWG or anything else Sony did.
I would just like the haters to start a hate Sony thread and I can safely say I won't pop in to give any Kudos to Sony.
So what if sony ruined my SWG? I probably would have spent the monthly sub fee on alcohol or drugs anyways
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So, you buy a game for $40 and it gets ruined 3 years later so you are mad because the game didn't give you your $40 worth...
You then buy a case of beer for $40 (I live in Canada - it's expensive to drink here) and find a dead bug in the bottom of a bottle so you never buy beer again?
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I don't hate SOE. But I have a funny Sony story.
I used to have a job that required me to meet periodically with peopel at Sony Music in New York. They had these really tiny little cramped offices... the place was a mess. But to get to it, you had to walk through this huge, empty, echoing first floor to a bank of elevators that all went to only one floor--the "sky lobby."
It was the most pretentious thing I had ever seen--and I was an ad wonk in New York, so I saw a lot of pretentious!
The whole way up those elevators, every time, all I could think was "pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain..."
I have no problems with Sony, just SOE.
When it comes to the way to do business, SOE has done a lot of wrong and stupid mistake. Not to mentioned how SOE screwed up SWG (a game that I have invested time and money to build up an online version of myself), and since they don't really refund subs fee (they did refund the bait-and-switch crap of the ToOW expansion, but not the yearly subs...), So I lost money over a few months which I cannot play my game (their fault for screwed it up).
For a company that is supposedly be in the service sector, SOE should listen when people are giving valid reasonings rather than looking at the money, because without customers, there is no profit to be made. So if they made a mistake, don't just "apologize" and keep the mistake. It's far more respectable to admit the mistake and fix it, rather than dance around the issue and dismiss the large number of customers that spoken out.
Some may say they hate them, but I don't really use the word "hate".
But I do think Smedley and his team have made way too many mistakes to be trusted.
So I will stay away from whatever games SOE is pushing out.
If you enjoy their games, good for you, but don't undermine what others have experienced.
Current MMO: FFXIV:ARR
Past MMO: Way too many (P2P and F2P)
I played SWG until the NGE and never looked back after cancelling. I had issues with the NGE but I moved on. Once I hit cancel I left it at that... I got even with SOE by not giving them my monthly subscription any longer. I have not been carrying the burden of that hate with me since I cancelled and I am just amazed that some will probably carry that hatred to the grave with them.
I am a peaceful person in the real world. I get angry when a deal turns bad or when my shipment is a month late but I don't sweat the small stuff... it all works itself out in the end.
Haters, ask yourself this and you will understand my thought process.
How did SOE affect you now?
How will it affect you in a week from now?
How will it affect you in a month or year from now?
How will it affect you in 10 years from now?
See the pattern? I am just trying to state that no matter what anger (or hatred if you truly feel it) has befallen you, time should heal all wounds. If you truly believe what SOE does today will affect you in 10 years then you should seek help because nothing should affect anyone negatively for that long a period.
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So you, too have high ethical standards that you or your family don't support Martha Stewart or Walmart or Dell or any retailer using sweatshops to produce their merchandise or scaring small manufacturers into selling their products for a loss until they are forced to close, or...
You can't honestly quote ethical standards and wear anything that wasn't handmade or eat anything you didn't personally grow.
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I am not going to quote that tripe. The OP is not a complete idiot, he is however, a corporation's best friend. I guess I could meet him point for point, but evidently there is no reason to ever hate a company. They, afterall, are only doing it in the name of business.
Here's hoping you never get ripped off man....
Played (more than a month): SWG, Second Life, Tabula Rasa, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, EvE, MxO, Ryzom.
Tried: WoW, Shadowbane, Anarchy Online, Everquest, WWII Online, Planetside
Beta: Lotro, Tabula Rasa, WAR.
if you went to a restaurant and three rats ran by you while you were eating, would you not say anything to anyone? would you not mention that to your friends? possibly the health authorities? if your answer is "no, i would say nothing to anyone"; then just keep on trucking, your post is nothing but a weaksauced troll.
some of us have actually reported SOE to the BBB for their *forgetting* to cancel subs. no reason anyone should ever know about that eh?
if a gaming company produces a horrid game, there's no reason a gamer shouldn't tell another gamer, is there? if a gaming company repeatedly produces horrid games, or makes real low quality games, there's no reason anyone should ever form a negative opinion about them, is there?
nope, nothing to see there, i'm sure there's a lot of people still loving soe games to death.
out of curiousity, if soe is such hotness, how many of their games have more subs than eve? ccp was forced to admit to cheating commited by their employees, and i'm willing to bet they still have more subs than most of soe's games. or does soe just lump everything together on the station pass so that no one has any idea how low each game's sub actually is? the fact that eve online is doing as well as it is, AFTER proven corruption, and even people that hate that the corruption existed -- still play eve... that really does say something about how soe has (mis)treated a large group of players.
truth. it's not just for breakfast any more.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
Sony stole my job, slashed my car tires, and ra**d my dog! damn them!
So you, too have high ethical standards that you or your family don't support Martha Stewart or Walmart or Dell or any retailer using sweatshops to produce their merchandise or scaring small manufacturers into selling their products for a loss until they are forced to close, or...
You can't honestly quote ethical standards and wear anything that wasn't handmade or eat anything you didn't personally grow.
How a company treats its employees and how it treats its customers are two different issues. One thing people have failed to mention is that SOE did not just change the game with no warning, they knowingly and deliberately deceived players into buying an expansion just days before they announced the changes.
In my book, that is practically fraud, and no company that defrauds its customers deserves a second chance.
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im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
if you went to a restaurant and three rats ran by you while you were eating, would you not say anything to anyone? would you not mention that to your friends? possibly the health authorities? if your answer is "no, i would say nothing to anyone"; then just keep on trucking, your post is nothing but a weaksauced troll.
some of us have actually reported SOE to the BBB for their *forgetting* to cancel subs. no reason anyone should ever know about that eh?
if a gaming company produces a horrid game, there's no reason a gamer shouldn't tell another gamer, is there? if a gaming company repeatedly produces horrid games, or makes real low quality games, there's no reason anyone should ever form a negative opinion about them, is there?
nope, nothing to see there, i'm sure there's a lot of people still loving soe games to death.
out of curiousity, if soe is such hotness, how many of their games have more subs than eve? ccp was forced to admit to cheating commited by their employees, and i'm willing to bet they still have more subs than most of soe's games. or does soe just lump everything together on the station pass so that no one has any idea how low each game's sub actually is? the fact that eve online is doing as well as it is, AFTER proven corruption, and even people that hate that the corruption existed -- still play eve... that really does say something about how soe has (mis)treated a large group of players.
truth. it's not just for breakfast any more.
The haters seem to be missing the point...
On an emotional level, do you really HATE a company? Consider the ramifications of the word hate and tell me honestly. I understand what Sony has done. I have lived and played through what sony has done since everquest in 1999 up to present. Yes, I too was angry for buying the expansion. Yes I was upset and cancelled with the CU/NGE fiasco.
I can respect everyone's feelings on the issue. I just think these SOE haters are throwing around a word like HATE too casually. It is a terrible word and in my line of work hate is a word uglier and more vulgar than cursing...
I suppose I am more sensitive to the word but regardless of that HATE is a terrible word and conjures terrible images for me. I suppose I can start avoiding Hate threads. I only started this thread to see if people understand the word hate or if they are just using it incorrectly.
I think it's the latter which gives me some relief.
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I wasn't happy about what sony did to SWG either, but I still like them because i had a good time in all of their others games.
The EQ series *all of them, eqoa included* were great classics, i don't play them anymore but I would be lieing to myself to say I didn't have fun when I did. Matrix online is doing alright, Planetside: another classic for me, they turned vanguard around and made it into somthing *sorta ;p*
I usually just ignore the SoE crap comments, they've come pretty far in the mmo industry and manage alot of mmo's. Im honestly impressed with soe. *I also want to throw in NCsoft cause they've made some good games to
*
I usually ignore the SoE bashers, its not like SoE cares if someone on these boards is bashing their games
Edit to clarify: And im not saying SoE is the king of mmo's, they've made plenty of moves that I thought were iffy or down right stupid, thats no where near enough to deserve somthing as awful as hate though, they've come a long way.
I may not exactly *hate* SOE, but IMHO you have to admit what they did was pretty unethical.
I'd bet there were many people who would have quit long before the NGE if it weren't for the promises that the problems would be fixed. Instead, many of the systems they promised to fix were removed entirely. SOE therefore collected the monthly fees of those people under false pretenses.
People often plan to play mmorpgs in the long term, and make their decisions on whether or not to play based on what they expect to get in the long term. If you have, say, an insurance policy where the premiums go down the longer you're signed up, there would almost certainly be outrage if the company suddenly decided after a year, "Yeah, we said you'd get a discount after you've been a subscriber this long, but for no reason we decided not to give it to you". Yes, the players of SWG did get to play for the months they paid, but in many cases they paid for those months thinking the game would get better in the future.
Technically, there may not be a breach of contract, which saves SOE from legal action. However, it does not prevent players from feeling like SOE failed to keep up its end of the deal. People therefore feel cheated, and that may be partly why you see so much anger.
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