Smed himself commented in an interview that SOE committed a cardinal sin when they didn't listen to their players.
The Smed has made that statement at least ten times for at least ten different things SOE has done, and I'd wager a million dollars he will make that statement again in the future (most likely when the monthly content updates stop for DCUO).
There are a number of things that are common occurance at SOE that are not (yet) common at other companies. SOE releases expansions with missing features and empty promises of adding the features later (there are still features from the last EQ2 expansion that are not in the game, and are unlikely to ever be in the game with the next expansion due out soon). The folks at SOE have a habit of lying about features in their products that are not in their products (They lied about having a quest in EQ2 to unlock the froglok race as playable for over six months before they actually added it. They also lied about jedi being in SWG at launch). SOE employees also have a habit of being outright hostile towards their customers and insulting them without provocation (Chris Cao's infamous meltdown, the majority of the SWG 'community relations' people, etc.). No other company has the habit of making massive changes to their games while outright lying about such changes occuring, as SOE had done over the course of SWG and EQ2 (the Smed said about a month before the Station Cash store was added to EQ and EQ2 that EQ2 would never have RMT on the non exchange servers).
The preceeding is just scratching the surface of things SOE does that are not common among other companies. It is by no means comprehensive.
I think that SOE is just another company, no better no worse. They screwed up on SWG, but how much of that was SOE and how much was LucasArts still isn't clear to me.
I didn't like how they dummied EQ and EQ2 up, but that was more out of a misplaced sense of the customer knowing best (in MMORPGs, that is almost never the case).
Matrix Online was a piece of crap. When they got it it was garbage and when it died the fans should have thanked SOE for fishing that thing out of the trash and letting them have a more drawn out goodbye. Vanguard was never rushed out the door by SOE, they were only distrbuting it. Sigil rushed it out due to the fact they were broke. Only after launch did SOE outright buy Vanguard. It would have been wonderful if they had done something with it, but they chose to spend their investment money somewhere else.
Is SOE a great company? Probably not, are they any worse than Blizzard or EA/Bioware? Probably not. Most of this endless SOE hate comes from hurt feelings and fond memoeries for a game that died 5 yrs ago. I find little of the conspiracy SOE hate based in reality.
I dunno Hayes, when I read your comments, and compare them to the experiences of most of the other respondents, I see a big difference. As for Vanguard, SOE was the publisher, and it appears they set the release date, even though the development house needed about 3 more months for a successful launch. Here's a quote to that effect:
"The game was released before it was ready, leading to:
Content was low for high-level players, and spotty even in some lower-level areas. Much planned high level content was not included at launch.
Large numbers of bugs and performance issues, which make gameplay difficult, and on some systems rendering the game virtually unplayable.
At release, performance was poor on many systems, including some high-end configurations. For example there was no anti-aliasing, and anisotropic filtering support was buggy.
'Had I had the financial resources, ability to place the product later, etc. I would have given us about 3 more months to get more polish in, more high level content in, and to distance ourselves from the WoW expansion.'"
One of the big complaints about SWG has always been the early release with serious bugs, issues and missing content. Judging from the quote above, it seems that SWG isn't the only SOE game that had these issues. Suggesting that SWG is unique, and the only source of player frustration seems simply incorrect.
From what I'm reading, it also seems incorrect to suggest that NGE (5 years ago) is the only thing that got under players' skin in SWG. A lot of people seem to be saying that they felt repeatedly burned by a company that rushed out buggy content, didn't listen to player feedback, didn't do what they said they were going to, and gave them all sorts of nasty surprises.
As for comparison's with Blizzard, I can't help thinking of the way they listened to player feedback and cancelled proposed changes to their forums. If SOE had listened that well to player feedback about numerous changes to SWG (Combat Upgrade and NGE to name just two) I believe they might be just as successful as the competition. Unfortunately, it seems they didn't listen, and their popularity plummetted as a result.
Smed himself commented in an interview that SOE committed a cardinal sin when they didn't listen to their players. I have yet to read Blizzard's CEO make a statement like that. I also have yet to see a mass player exodus from WoW. Blizz seems to do at least two things that SOE seems to struggle with: 1) put out an abundance of highly polished content, 2) respond favourably to player feedback, even if it means changing their plans for the game or service.
I see your point, however, specifically with regards to Vanguard and McQuaid's comments, SOE was co-publisher at launch. Brad McQuaid and his lack of buisness skill and Microsoft jumping ship was more at fault in Vanguard's horrible launch than SOE. Sigil went broke and launched. they had avoided any relationship with SOE until Microsoft dropped out as the publisher because of McQuaid's past with SOE. Your McQuaid quote was dead on, but in this context the assumption that SOE was the source of the money is wrong. http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=561 is a interesting article to read, it states that SOE was hands off on the game until it train wrecked.
I still play Vanguard today, and enjoy it. I wish SOE would pour some cash to it, but its not happening. Luckily its a big enough game to keep a guy going even without xpacs.
I never said that NGE was the only thing they did to that game, but it was the worst. Blizzard didn't change their forums, but they have made mountains of unpopluar changes to WoW that players hated. As to bugs, I bought WoW at launch, Tabula Rasa, Aion, City of Heroes/Villians, Fallen Earth.......All these games have suffered from bugs and problems. To attribute that to a SOE plot, seems a bit silly to me. SWG even before the changes was not truely in any shape to compete with the larger games. Initial box sales were more based on the IP than the content. SOE was horrible at hacking the game, no one is denying this, but I stated that I am still unsure of how much blame should LucasArts get as well (George Lucas is a psycho when it comes to protecting his right to be the one that destroys his greatest work).
Smed did say that, but so has every other buisness that has ever pissed their customers off and wanted to keep them (including blizzard). I'm not justifying what SOe has done, or them as a company, but like I said, I think a lot of the hate that floats in this forum is not neccesarily rational. A lot of it is a emotional response to what happened to SWG.
"I'm not justifying what SOe has done, or them as a company, but like I said, I think a lot of the hate that floats in this forum is not neccesarily rational. A lot of it is a emotional response to what happened to SWG."
There is plenty of well documtented reasons why gamers 'hate' $OE. If you are addressing the level of hate that seems to be expressed by some SWG vets, maybe some of it is due to the sense of betrayal, which inflicts a deeper wound than many other 'wrongs' and it leaves scars. Also keep in mind the forum you are in - a very common factor is disgust/hatred for $OE due to the NGE. Keep in mind that 'Hate' is subjective.
What exactly do you find currently irrational? I think there was some 'irrational' respones long ago, but not really anymore. I come to the SWG primarily to refute the intentional misinformation that gets posted regularly here by the virals and fanbois. $OE is a disreputable company. I 'hate' $OE and have chosen never to play any $OE games for reasons not just NGE related which have been well discussed here and other forums.
I think that SOE is just another company, no better no worse. They screwed up on SWG, but how much of that was SOE and how much was LucasArts still isn't clear to me.
I didn't like how they dummied EQ and EQ2 up, but that was more out of a misplaced sense of the customer knowing best (in MMORPGs, that is almost never the case).
Matrix Online was a piece of crap. When they got it it was garbage and when it died the fans should have thanked SOE for fishing that thing out of the trash and letting them have a more drawn out goodbye. Vanguard was never rushed out the door by SOE, they were only distrbuting it. Sigil rushed it out due to the fact they were broke. Only after launch did SOE outright buy Vanguard. It would have been wonderful if they had done something with it, but they chose to spend their investment money somewhere else.
Is SOE a great company? Probably not, are they any worse than Blizzard or EA/Bioware? Probably not. Most of this endless SOE hate comes from hurt feelings and fond memoeries for a game that died 5 yrs ago. I find little of the conspiracy SOE hate based in reality.
I dunno Hayes, when I read your comments, and compare them to the experiences of most of the other respondents, I see a big difference. As for Vanguard, SOE was the publisher, and it appears they set the release date, even though the development house needed about 3 more months for a successful launch. Here's a quote to that effect:
"The game was released before it was ready, leading to:
Content was low for high-level players, and spotty even in some lower-level areas. Much planned high level content was not included at launch.
Large numbers of bugs and performance issues, which make gameplay difficult, and on some systems rendering the game virtually unplayable.
At release, performance was poor on many systems, including some high-end configurations. For example there was no anti-aliasing, and anisotropic filtering support was buggy.
'Had I had the financial resources, ability to place the product later, etc. I would have given us about 3 more months to get more polish in, more high level content in, and to distance ourselves from the WoW expansion.'"
One of the big complaints about SWG has always been the early release with serious bugs, issues and missing content. Judging from the quote above, it seems that SWG isn't the only SOE game that had these issues. Suggesting that SWG is unique, and the only source of player frustration seems simply incorrect.
From what I'm reading, it also seems incorrect to suggest that NGE (5 years ago) is the only thing that got under players' skin in SWG. A lot of people seem to be saying that they felt repeatedly burned by a company that rushed out buggy content, didn't listen to player feedback, didn't do what they said they were going to, and gave them all sorts of nasty surprises.
As for comparison's with Blizzard, I can't help thinking of the way they listened to player feedback and cancelled proposed changes to their forums. If SOE had listened that well to player feedback about numerous changes to SWG (Combat Upgrade and NGE to name just two) I believe they might be just as successful as the competition. Unfortunately, it seems they didn't listen, and their popularity plummetted as a result.
Smed himself commented in an interview that SOE committed a cardinal sin when they didn't listen to their players. I have yet to read Blizzard's CEO make a statement like that. I also have yet to see a mass player exodus from WoW. Blizz seems to do at least two things that SOE seems to struggle with: 1) put out an abundance of highly polished content, 2) respond favourably to player feedback, even if it means changing their plans for the game or service.
I see your point, however, specifically with regards to Vanguard and McQuaid's comments, SOE was co-publisher at launch. Brad McQuaid and his lack of buisness skill and Microsoft jumping ship was more at fault in Vanguard's horrible launch than SOE. Sigil went broke and launched. they had avoided any relationship with SOE until Microsoft dropped out as the publisher because of McQuaid's past with SOE. Your McQuaid quote was dead on, but in this context the assumption that SOE was the source of the money is wrong. http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=561 is a interesting article to read, it states that SOE was hands off on the game until it train wrecked.
I still play Vanguard today, and enjoy it. I wish SOE would pour some cash to it, but its not happening. Luckily its a big enough game to keep a guy going even without xpacs.
I never said that NGE was the only thing they did to that game, but it was the worst. Blizzard didn't change their forums, but they have made mountains of unpopluar changes to WoW that players hated. As to bugs, I bought WoW at launch, Tabula Rasa, Aion, City of Heroes/Villians, Fallen Earth.......All these games have suffered from bugs and problems. To attribute that to a SOE plot, seems a bit silly to me. SWG even before the changes was not truely in any shape to compete with the larger games. Initial box sales were more based on the IP than the content. SOE was horrible at hacking the game, no one is denying this, but I stated that I am still unsure of how much blame should LucasArts get as well (George Lucas is a psycho when it comes to protecting his right to be the one that destroys his greatest work).
Smed did say that, but so has every other buisness that has ever pissed their customers off and wanted to keep them (including blizzard). I'm not justifying what SOe has done, or them as a company, but like I said, I think a lot of the hate that floats in this forum is not neccesarily rational. A lot of it is a emotional response to what happened to SWG.
So nice to read such a well thought-out response Thanks. I think we agree on the SWG deal, that NGE wasn't the only thing that went wrong, just that it happened to be the worst. Are people's perceptions influenced by the worst thing that happened to them? I'm sure they are, that's only human imo. That's why companies should avoid scenarios like the NGE. They tend to be unforgettable...as much as the company might hope everyone will forget.
At the same time, what I think, and what others seem to see is that NGE wasn't really all that uncharacteristic of SOE. They've surprised people before that with very unpopular decisions, and they've done so again afterwards. I've seen some posts and articles that seem to suggest that SOE gets bad press simply because people refuse to get over that one mistake they made in one of their titles. This theory seems to cast SOE in a favourable light, at the expense of their customers' credibility. I simply don't buy it, and it doesn't seem to fit with others' experience.
Likewise regarding titles like Vanguard, Matrix and SWG, I don't buy the notion that SOE's partners screwed them up, and that SOE was somehow an innocent by-stander. That seems like a spin-job that doesn't fit with others' experiences and observations. Brenlo of SOE, for example, told me personally that NGE was 100% SOE's decision. He posted this on the public forums, and people still try shift blame to LucasArts. That truly amazes me.
Simply put, I think that people have bad feelings towards SOE because of a number of bad experiences across a number of their titles. Sure NGE was probably the worst example of this, but I don't think it was by any means an isolated event, as some seem to suggest.
If SOE really wants to avoid bad word-of-mouth, it seems to me that they need to become experts at releasing polished games, listening to customer feedback, following through on what they say they're going to do, and avoiding nasty surprises. Pointing fingers at business partners and suggesting that their players are unreasonable crack-pots doesn't seem like a winning strategy. If anything it just alienates people more, and generates more negative discussion.
Comments
The Smed has made that statement at least ten times for at least ten different things SOE has done, and I'd wager a million dollars he will make that statement again in the future (most likely when the monthly content updates stop for DCUO).
There are a number of things that are common occurance at SOE that are not (yet) common at other companies. SOE releases expansions with missing features and empty promises of adding the features later (there are still features from the last EQ2 expansion that are not in the game, and are unlikely to ever be in the game with the next expansion due out soon). The folks at SOE have a habit of lying about features in their products that are not in their products (They lied about having a quest in EQ2 to unlock the froglok race as playable for over six months before they actually added it. They also lied about jedi being in SWG at launch). SOE employees also have a habit of being outright hostile towards their customers and insulting them without provocation (Chris Cao's infamous meltdown, the majority of the SWG 'community relations' people, etc.). No other company has the habit of making massive changes to their games while outright lying about such changes occuring, as SOE had done over the course of SWG and EQ2 (the Smed said about a month before the Station Cash store was added to EQ and EQ2 that EQ2 would never have RMT on the non exchange servers).
The preceeding is just scratching the surface of things SOE does that are not common among other companies. It is by no means comprehensive.
I see your point, however, specifically with regards to Vanguard and McQuaid's comments, SOE was co-publisher at launch. Brad McQuaid and his lack of buisness skill and Microsoft jumping ship was more at fault in Vanguard's horrible launch than SOE. Sigil went broke and launched. they had avoided any relationship with SOE until Microsoft dropped out as the publisher because of McQuaid's past with SOE. Your McQuaid quote was dead on, but in this context the assumption that SOE was the source of the money is wrong. http://www.f13.net/index.php?itemid=561 is a interesting article to read, it states that SOE was hands off on the game until it train wrecked.
I still play Vanguard today, and enjoy it. I wish SOE would pour some cash to it, but its not happening. Luckily its a big enough game to keep a guy going even without xpacs.
I never said that NGE was the only thing they did to that game, but it was the worst. Blizzard didn't change their forums, but they have made mountains of unpopluar changes to WoW that players hated. As to bugs, I bought WoW at launch, Tabula Rasa, Aion, City of Heroes/Villians, Fallen Earth.......All these games have suffered from bugs and problems. To attribute that to a SOE plot, seems a bit silly to me. SWG even before the changes was not truely in any shape to compete with the larger games. Initial box sales were more based on the IP than the content. SOE was horrible at hacking the game, no one is denying this, but I stated that I am still unsure of how much blame should LucasArts get as well (George Lucas is a psycho when it comes to protecting his right to be the one that destroys his greatest work).
Smed did say that, but so has every other buisness that has ever pissed their customers off and wanted to keep them (including blizzard). I'm not justifying what SOe has done, or them as a company, but like I said, I think a lot of the hate that floats in this forum is not neccesarily rational. A lot of it is a emotional response to what happened to SWG.
"I'm not justifying what SOe has done, or them as a company, but like I said, I think a lot of the hate that floats in this forum is not neccesarily rational. A lot of it is a emotional response to what happened to SWG."
There is plenty of well documtented reasons why gamers 'hate' $OE. If you are addressing the level of hate that seems to be expressed by some SWG vets, maybe some of it is due to the sense of betrayal, which inflicts a deeper wound than many other 'wrongs' and it leaves scars. Also keep in mind the forum you are in - a very common factor is disgust/hatred for $OE due to the NGE. Keep in mind that 'Hate' is subjective.
What exactly do you find currently irrational? I think there was some 'irrational' respones long ago, but not really anymore. I come to the SWG primarily to refute the intentional misinformation that gets posted regularly here by the virals and fanbois. $OE is a disreputable company. I 'hate' $OE and have chosen never to play any $OE games for reasons not just NGE related which have been well discussed here and other forums.
So nice to read such a well thought-out response
Thanks. I think we agree on the SWG deal, that NGE wasn't the only thing that went wrong, just that it happened to be the worst. Are people's perceptions influenced by the worst thing that happened to them? I'm sure they are, that's only human imo. That's why companies should avoid scenarios like the NGE. They tend to be unforgettable...as much as the company might hope everyone will forget.
At the same time, what I think, and what others seem to see is that NGE wasn't really all that uncharacteristic of SOE. They've surprised people before that with very unpopular decisions, and they've done so again afterwards. I've seen some posts and articles that seem to suggest that SOE gets bad press simply because people refuse to get over that one mistake they made in one of their titles. This theory seems to cast SOE in a favourable light, at the expense of their customers' credibility. I simply don't buy it, and it doesn't seem to fit with others' experience.
Likewise regarding titles like Vanguard, Matrix and SWG, I don't buy the notion that SOE's partners screwed them up, and that SOE was somehow an innocent by-stander. That seems like a spin-job that doesn't fit with others' experiences and observations. Brenlo of SOE, for example, told me personally that NGE was 100% SOE's decision. He posted this on the public forums, and people still try shift blame to LucasArts. That truly amazes me.
Simply put, I think that people have bad feelings towards SOE because of a number of bad experiences across a number of their titles. Sure NGE was probably the worst example of this, but I don't think it was by any means an isolated event, as some seem to suggest.
If SOE really wants to avoid bad word-of-mouth, it seems to me that they need to become experts at releasing polished games, listening to customer feedback, following through on what they say they're going to do, and avoiding nasty surprises. Pointing fingers at business partners and suggesting that their players are unreasonable crack-pots doesn't seem like a winning strategy. If anything it just alienates people more, and generates more negative discussion.