Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
SOE's Smedley says MMO copycats incoming, drops hints on PlanetSide Next release
firefly2003
Member UncommonPosts: 2,527
Big things are happening at SOE these days, and whether you're talking about the newly minted DC Universe Online or the company's PlanetSide followup and spy-centric The Agency, it's an exciting time to be a fan. Eurogamer brings us a bit of info regarding potential release windows for both PlanetSide Next and The Agency, and the former looks to be gracing our desktops much sooner than we expected given the general lack of information to date.
"We're looking at late first quarter, early second quarter [2011]," says SOE head honcho John Smedley in regard to the long-awaited PlanetSide sequel. Players will have to wait a bit longer to get their espionage fix, as The Agency is still slated to arrive "late this year."
Why so long? It boils down to SOE's desire to differentiate itself from the competition. "There's some stuff coming out in the next two or three months, MMO-wise, and a lot of it is generic copycats of other games," Smedley tells Eurogamer. He also talks a bit about the impending arrival of Free Realms on the Playstation 3, intimating that the free-to-play title will spread its console wings in early February.
Hard to believe that coming from the Smedster considering he tried to copycat WOW's sucess with SWG and we all know how that trainwreck came about...
Comments
emm yea smed seems like abit of a wank, i jsut hope hes not wanking us about PS:N
SKYeXile
TRF - GM - GW2, PS2, WAR, AION, Rift, WoW, WOT....etc...
Future Crew - High Council. Planetside 1 & 2.
I HATE him, because of what he did to SWG, which was once amazing and now it is a WoW wanna be. But he has said a few times since then that it was a big mistake to change SWG, so he would probably just say that again here if he were to reply to your post.
I am hopeful for PS. PS and SWG were both my favorite MMOs to date. We'll see! :-)
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
generic copycats? What could he be talking about?
Obviously Rift is one. It's a HUGE contender for VG and EQ2 people right now. I base that off of the miriad comments during beta from players from those 2 games talking about moving to Rift as well as hearing people playing EQ2 talk about Rift.
He's also probably referring to SWTOR as that will take away from SWG and is very similar to WoW.
I just find it hilarious this coming from the company who went and revamped EQ2 to be more WoW like. Irony, I love it.
I dunno maybe Rift <-> WoW
Smed talks as if his company hasn't tried to emulate wow for the last five years or that DCU is that far removed.
EQ2 is always one step behind wow, yes, but how the heck is DCU a WoW clone?
Oh, Smedley. The irony. Man that guy is such a little putz haha.
Smedley has copied WoW, then copied Runescape and now he is copying Zynga's Facebook games.
Imagination is not his strength.
A rich putz that has had led a company that has released several 'successful' games. Though EQ2 is no WoW, it certainly has been successful for SOE. EQ was one of the leaders in the MMO industry for a good number of years. Sure, SOE has published a few failures or bought a few failures, but you cannot deny that he was right (even if it is unethical in the way he markets/sells it) with claiming that f2p was the next big thing in MMO's; SOE's Free Realms is clear evidence of this. In fact, it's been such a huge success, they recently released another one based upon Stars Wars: The Clone Wars.
Don't get me wrong. I don't like the guy either, but you cannot deny that SOE is a successful MMO development/publishing company, and Smedley is the head of it. How many of you lead a multi-million dollar business that releases products that cost tens of millions to produce?
splat
Its interesting how much energy some ppl/companies put in debates about copycats and who copy from whom.
On other hand the more time and energy, in this case Smedley, waste on talking about copycats, the less he have to say about his own games which speak fair enough about them or company.
Obvious shot at Rift´s impending catastrophic failure is obvious
You can accuse SOE of plenty of things....blatantly ripping off WoW from A to Z isnt one of them
thats a hell of a lot more than Trion can say
God I fucking hate this guy he somehow managed to destroy a former great portfolio in absolutely no time: SWG, Vanguard, Everquest 2, Matrix Online, Potbs and especially Everquest the list goes and on...seriously this company will never ever get a dime from me, never.
Well since Everquest Next will be on the console also, I'm sure its dumbed down and limited like hell hopefully DCUO flops big time MMORPGS shouldn't be avaiable on consoles altough its not a real MMORPG.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
I'll be honest: if SOE offered me a job in their MMO division I'd jump in without hesitation(not that I even remotely have the resume needed to get that job--all joking aside). All of their in-house sub MMOs could have been blockbusters if they had some good Q&A time and a voice of reason.
My youtube MMO gaming channel
Ya know, if SOE got rid of Smedley I might actually consider trying one of their MMO's. As it stands now, I won't go near an SOE title.
Let's party like it is 1863!
Not a clone, but not far removed either. Aside from the combat almost all of the game mechanics are the same kill 10 bad guy quests, pvp arenas, daily quests/raids for tokens to get raid armor.
Hopefully Planetside2 isn't just rehashed ideas from other games glued together with a subscription fee tacked on.
I've posted this on another forum when this topic came up.. but it is only the truth..
Smedley is trollin....
Err, Smedley is AFAIK a businessman, not a game designer.
Thats why he has trouble in this business ... if you're not a gamer, you'll keep being confused by it.
Then again no gamer prediced that success of WoW. In fact I myself still cant explain it until today. Its a mystery to me, just like the success of Diablo 2 before.
Well, and about Rift, it is really nothing like Vanguard, so I have no clue why I am supposed to be interested in it.
Vanguards big advantages are:
- Wonderful class system full of possibilities and depth
- Amazing realistic viewing distances
- Extremly large game world (still too small for me, but whatever), massively filled up with quests
- Great crafting, unique game element diplomacy
- Housing, ships
When I checked out Rift, I only went so far as the races and classes, then I was already completely stuffed. Thats an absolutely awful, crappy rulesystem I dont want to play. Certainly nothing like Vanguard at all.