Well, I've played quite a few SOE games and so far I have to say that when it comes to if I will open another account with them for a current or future game, I have my concerns. I do believe their customer service isn't the greatest in the world. In fact, most of their customer service reps just ignore most issues and give the same old automated response even when there are issues that need to be looked into by a real person. They don't give good feedback as to why they either give you the automated response (which I take as being ignored) or why they don't look into your issue(s) you have with their games or your account with them. Also, they take forever to get back to you on issues (i'm talking days to weeks here).
As for their games, I have to admit, they make some good games. However, somewhere along the line they either screw up (or change) game design or mechanics of their games or they don't address major issues that affect customers gaming experience. In the case of the major issues, I'm talking about exploits, broken game elements and such. They will allow bugs, exploits and broken game elements to stick around for months on end, even a year or more before they attempt to fix such issues and all the while, they never communicate with the customers about what they are doing or gonna do to fix issues.
That brings me to another issue with SOE. In every game they have developed and that I have played (nearly all of them), they do not communicate well with their customers. Even when you write them, phone them or send private messages to them, they most often don't respond at all or they again give you the automated response treatment. When you have questions or concerns about things, instead of them just saying why they aren't gonna address an issue, all they say is "Working as intended" or "we are looking into the matter". Then a year later, your still wondering why nothing has been done or said about it again, yet the issue still exist. When I attempt to talk to SOE developers, I just feel like I'm ignored 99% of the time.
Overall, I gave SOE a terrible rating becuase for 4 years, I have felt that they simply do not care about their customers regardless of the game or product being talked about. It seems SOE is after one and only one thing, MONEY. As long as you pay them, they can care less about us and when it comes to any kind of issue, they will fix it at their leisure all the while, the customers are having bad game experiences. I'm sorry, but SOE needs to show me that we (the customers) matter to them in any way because when I play an SOE game, I just don't feel the customer love so to speak.
I used to play FFXI and never had a problem with SOE the only reason i don't play it anymore is got 2 charaters with over 14 lvl 75 jobs between them and found that i was just doing the same thing over and over.
Square-enix is not Sony Online Entertainment..... FFXI = Square-enix
Originally posted by infrared1
Thank you all for your votes and opinions. So far its beginning to look a bit one sided.
Currently only 64 people have voted and i know that there are more people than this that can give there vote.
There are over a half million members on MMORPG,com and i can only get 64 peoples opinions???
And there is over 170 online currently.
How am i supposed to get a majority opinion if i only get 64 of a half million members??
THANK YOU AGAIN TO THOSE WHO DID VOTE AND OFFER SOME OPINION. I LOOK TO THIS COMMUNITY AS THE UTMOST PROFESSIONALS ON THE PULSE OF GAMING.
Not everyone is interested in this topic. Give it a couple days and let the votes come in...impatience will not amount to anything useful.
I believe SOE could be a great team if they buckled up a little and listens to their customers.
They don't even have to listen to their customers to improve themselves. The main thing they need to do is realize that their customers are not the enemy and not act openly hostile towards them. That is the main problem the company has had since the early days of Everquest. SOE is the pioneer of extremely poor customer service in the MMO sector of the gaming industry. SOE has a very bad habit of hiring people to interact with their community that have no business dealing with customers. The only decent 'Community Relations' people SOE has(d) on staff are the ones who are on the EQ2 project, and the head of them left to join a new startup. The 'Community Relations' Manager, Brenlo, come across as an asshole with a chip on his shoulder most of the time. That isn't exactly the image a professional company should project. Sadly enough, the days of Gordon Wrinn, or "Abashi", would actually be an improvement, and he was horrible at interacting with EQ's community.
They also have a habit of intentionally lying to their customers. Even discounting the borderline fraud committed with the last Star Wars Galaxies expansion and the changes made to that game, the folks at SOE have lied to their customers far more than any company that isn't a Hollywood caricature should ever feel compelled to. Some of the lies are idiotic due to the insignificance of what they lied about (ie., the whole Froglock deal with EQ2). A piece of advice, if you feel you need to mislead your customers about some change you are making to your product, for fear that they will stop being a customer, the change is probably a bad idea. Unfortunately, there are far too many people who are willing to be treated poorly, lied to, and have no problem with paying to play unfinished products to make most of SOE's actions have enough consequences to alter their behavior.
Speaking of unfinished products, can anyone name an SOE product that was released in a finished, meaning mostly bug free, stable, and playable state? The release of Vanguard was exactly like the release of EQ, except for the whole causing the company behind it going out of business and selling their assets. EQ was released with severe performance issues and a similar "You need to buy one of the machines that will be released next year to truly experience how great it is!" meme. There has been little to no improvement in this regard since those days. In fact, most SOE employees still fall back on the idiotic "MMOs are never finished!" cannard when asked about when whichever new game they have released will be in a stable, playable condition.
SOE seems to also seemingly reward failure. The next premier game SOE has in the works is the one based on the DC Comics IP. After management's direction of how the game should be had driven off at least two entire development teams, the geniuses at SOE have promoted the folks, who have done little more than piss off the Star Wars Galaxies players (the current ones), to being in charge of the DC Comics game. Both the former Star Wars Galaxies producer and lead designer, both of whom enjoyed figuratively poking sticks into the hornet's nest that is the official SWG forums, and have very few of the current players, who actually enjoy the game as it is now, who will say anything nice about them. Even though the last two publishes were comprised of things that were conceived and posted to the forums while both Rogue_5 and Helios were still in charge of SWG, their replacements are being given all the credit for them and players regularly make comments that such changes would never have been made if those two were still on the project (yeah, it doesn't say much for the intelligence of the current SWG players).
The folks at SOE need to stop acting like they are still the leader in the MMO market. They need to treat their customers with at the very least professional courtesy, if they cannot muster even a tiny bit of respect. The company could easily change their image by getting rid of several people and to stop acting like their customers are the enemy. SOE is a company with one game that isn't complete crap (EQ2), that acts like it is still the days when the only options available are UO and EQ. The MMO market has grown, yet SOE hasn't adapted to the changes that that growth has brought.
Just the fact that there is a discussion about how bad a company SOE is should tell them that they need to make some changes.
Take blizzard for example. They are the leader in the MMO market obviously, but they still treat their playerbase with as much courtesy and professionalism as when they were just the small company that made warcraft, from what I can tell. And every game that Blizzard has ever released has been infinitly more polished than ANY SOE game that has been released for years.
Why? Because they actually care, I think.
BTW, not a blizzard fanboy by any means, just giving credit where it's due.
Personally for me, SOE is .... ok as a developer/publisher. They are not great, but they are not that bad.
They do make mistake (as all of us do), it's just that their mistake affects hundreds of thousands people. (Like what people would keep mention: The NGE fiasco for my favorite game, SWG)
To be fair, if they put their focus to it, they can make good and stable games. (but this is the hardest part for any developers/publishers)
Anyways, I will still be very careful when it comes to the games that are related to SOE since of their past histories in different games.
Off topic on the NGE stuff:
BTW, during one of the interview that I read, John Smedley said that sand-box style doesn't work, and I think that is the reason for their mistake - the developers/publishers doesn't even like the game, so they will screw it up just because it isn't fun for them...
SOE kicks puppies. It's true. But they don't mean it.
I like SOE games, for better or worse. I've had mixed luck with in-game customer support. I did have one infuriating problem with guild creation in EQ1 that could have been solved if a GM had actually shown up, but I eventually worked around their stupidity and tricked them into fixing it (rather than telling me that there was nothing to be fixed. Grr.)
I think it is kind of crappy that if you need to call customer service or tech support, you have to call San Diego and they don't have a toll-free number... but I have unlimited long distance, so I am willing to sit it out. I can't get their stupid support site to work like it is supposed to, so I had to go to the phone when I had a problem with my accounts earlier this year. I think I'd have been right pissy about sitting on queue for 45 minutes if I didn't have unlimited long distance, though. The nice tech support guy did fix my problem in under 5 minutes once I got to him, anyway.
... This is where I draw the line: __________________.
$OE are an evil corporation set on making their customers misirable, sad, and broke!. If i didn't know better i would say that $OE is set on world domination and the way they fund their program is by stealing gamers hard erned CASH!
P.S. I Saw an $OE representative stealing candy from a toddler =(
What I don't like about SOE are their business strategies. I don't like to be 'nickel and dimed' for content and features. That way of doing business is not appreciated especially with all of the other games on the market and coming up. It certainly does not win any loyalty. Everquest2 is a good game, in my opinion, but is shadowed by their business side.
while i never played any SOE game just because of the NGE i would not ever want to try a SOE title because as soon as i get into the game they probly will kill it and not listen to the number of hate threads and record number of ppl that will leave the game like swg so i cant say i hate or like them becuase i never played there games and never will.
Soe made some wrong decissions but in eq2 worked hard to fix them ,new games dont look promissing .Best games that soe has are eq1 and eq2 .She must learn from the past mistakes and never do them again.
So, is SOE a good game developer / publisher? Or are they bad news?
I'm just interested to see what the majority of gamers think.
Please be able to give an intelligent well thought out answer. Do not base your answer on one thing, but overall perspective of them based on experience. Look at the bigger picture, then answer honestly.
Take into consideration, ie. Customer support, Game development, Game content, Graphics and all of their games including console and PC.
Thank you.
Bad poll for this forum community.... this forum community is based off of old SwG players
Also Your post didnt have War or AoC in it so most likly anything other then that will be terrible!
ZINK! To you Mmorpg community zink to you
99.00001% of the time I dont know what im saying 99.99% of the time I know I spelled the word wrong or repeated a sentence.. I did it so you can better your grammar 100.00% of the time if to many people post after my post very mad ill most likely with a 5% chance saying something like ....""
100.00% of the time I lack sleep and magical things come out of my head and type my posts for me? Please yell at the magical things not me... I am but a puppet
Bad poll for this forum community.... this forum community is based off of old SwG players
I have never played SwG and I still think SOE is pretty bad. SOE don't care what they do as long it makes money for them. If game business would not make good money, they would not be in game business. Some other companies do games, because that is what they want to do, the money is just supporting it.
Everquest 2 was pretty stable and more or less bugfree when I beta tested it.
Actually Everquest 2 seems to be the first in the line to show beta to their customers as example.
And if you think SOE is bad what do you think of EA that buried 2 MMORPGs already and has a beta client of UO out there that makes real use of the word beta for the next 3-6 months.
What I don't like about SOE are their business strategies. I don't like to be 'nickel and dimed' for content and features. That way of doing business is not appreciated especially with all of the other games on the market and coming up. It certainly does not win any loyalty. Everquest2 is a good game, in my opinion, but is shadowed by their business side.
I don't find that so bad, they are not blizzard with millions so the expansions pay themselves easily.
So, is SOE a good game developer / publisher? Or are they bad news?
I'm just interested to see what the majority of gamers think.
Please be able to give an intelligent well thought out answer. Do not base your answer on one thing, but overall perspective of them based on experience. Look at the bigger picture, then answer honestly.
Take into consideration, ie. Customer support, Game development, Game content, Graphics and all of their games including console and PC.
Comments
As for their games, I have to admit, they make some good games. However, somewhere along the line they either screw up (or change) game design or mechanics of their games or they don't address major issues that affect customers gaming experience. In the case of the major issues, I'm talking about exploits, broken game elements and such. They will allow bugs, exploits and broken game elements to stick around for months on end, even a year or more before they attempt to fix such issues and all the while, they never communicate with the customers about what they are doing or gonna do to fix issues.
That brings me to another issue with SOE. In every game they have developed and that I have played (nearly all of them), they do not communicate well with their customers. Even when you write them, phone them or send private messages to them, they most often don't respond at all or they again give you the automated response treatment. When you have questions or concerns about things, instead of them just saying why they aren't gonna address an issue, all they say is "Working as intended" or "we are looking into the matter". Then a year later, your still wondering why nothing has been done or said about it again, yet the issue still exist. When I attempt to talk to SOE developers, I just feel like I'm ignored 99% of the time.
Overall, I gave SOE a terrible rating becuase for 4 years, I have felt that they simply do not care about their customers regardless of the game or product being talked about. It seems SOE is after one and only one thing, MONEY. As long as you pay them, they can care less about us and when it comes to any kind of issue, they will fix it at their leisure all the while, the customers are having bad game experiences. I'm sorry, but SOE needs to show me that we (the customers) matter to them in any way because when I play an SOE game, I just don't feel the customer love so to speak.
QFT.
The day Smedley is fired, I will throw a party.
Currently only 64 people have voted and i know that there are more people than this that can give there vote.
There are over a half million members on MMORPG,com and i can only get 64 peoples opinions???
And there is over 170 online currently.
How am i supposed to get a majority opinion if i only get 64 of a half million members??
THANK YOU AGAIN TO THOSE WHO DID VOTE AND OFFER SOME OPINION. I LOOK TO THIS COMMUNITY AS THE UTMOST PROFESSIONALS ON THE PULSE OF GAMING.
Square-enix is not Sony Online Entertainment..... FFXI = Square-enix
Not everyone is interested in this topic. Give it a couple days and let the votes come in...impatience will not amount to anything useful.
They also have a habit of intentionally lying to their customers. Even discounting the borderline fraud committed with the last Star Wars Galaxies expansion and the changes made to that game, the folks at SOE have lied to their customers far more than any company that isn't a Hollywood caricature should ever feel compelled to. Some of the lies are idiotic due to the insignificance of what they lied about (ie., the whole Froglock deal with EQ2). A piece of advice, if you feel you need to mislead your customers about some change you are making to your product, for fear that they will stop being a customer, the change is probably a bad idea. Unfortunately, there are far too many people who are willing to be treated poorly, lied to, and have no problem with paying to play unfinished products to make most of SOE's actions have enough consequences to alter their behavior.
Speaking of unfinished products, can anyone name an SOE product that was released in a finished, meaning mostly bug free, stable, and playable state? The release of Vanguard was exactly like the release of EQ, except for the whole causing the company behind it going out of business and selling their assets. EQ was released with severe performance issues and a similar "You need to buy one of the machines that will be released next year to truly experience how great it is!" meme. There has been little to no improvement in this regard since those days. In fact, most SOE employees still fall back on the idiotic "MMOs are never finished!" cannard when asked about when whichever new game they have released will be in a stable, playable condition.
SOE seems to also seemingly reward failure. The next premier game SOE has in the works is the one based on the DC Comics IP. After management's direction of how the game should be had driven off at least two entire development teams, the geniuses at SOE have promoted the folks, who have done little more than piss off the Star Wars Galaxies players (the current ones), to being in charge of the DC Comics game. Both the former Star Wars Galaxies producer and lead designer, both of whom enjoyed figuratively poking sticks into the hornet's nest that is the official SWG forums, and have very few of the current players, who actually enjoy the game as it is now, who will say anything nice about them. Even though the last two publishes were comprised of things that were conceived and posted to the forums while both Rogue_5 and Helios were still in charge of SWG, their replacements are being given all the credit for them and players regularly make comments that such changes would never have been made if those two were still on the project (yeah, it doesn't say much for the intelligence of the current SWG players).
The folks at SOE need to stop acting like they are still the leader in the MMO market. They need to treat their customers with at the very least professional courtesy, if they cannot muster even a tiny bit of respect. The company could easily change their image by getting rid of several people and to stop acting like their customers are the enemy. SOE is a company with one game that isn't complete crap (EQ2), that acts like it is still the days when the only options available are UO and EQ. The MMO market has grown, yet SOE hasn't adapted to the changes that that growth has brought.
Just the fact that there is a discussion about how bad a company SOE is should tell them that they need to make some changes.
Couldn't have said it better myself, Obee.
Take blizzard for example. They are the leader in the MMO market obviously, but they still treat their playerbase with as much courtesy and professionalism as when they were just the small company that made warcraft, from what I can tell. And every game that Blizzard has ever released has been infinitly more polished than ANY SOE game that has been released for years.
Why? Because they actually care, I think.
BTW, not a blizzard fanboy by any means, just giving credit where it's due.
They do make mistake (as all of us do), it's just that their mistake affects hundreds of thousands people. (Like what people would keep mention: The NGE fiasco for my favorite game, SWG)
To be fair, if they put their focus to it, they can make good and stable games. (but this is the hardest part for any developers/publishers)
Anyways, I will still be very careful when it comes to the games that are related to SOE since of their past histories in different games.
Off topic on the NGE stuff:
BTW, during one of the interview that I read, John Smedley said that sand-box style doesn't work, and I think that is the reason for their mistake - the developers/publishers doesn't even like the game, so they will screw it up just because it isn't fun for them...
Current MMO: FFXIV:ARR
Past MMO: Way too many (P2P and F2P)
Obee that was the most lucid & rational complaint of SOE I've read on these boards.
I tend to chuckle at these SOE sucks threads but that review was spot on.
ZV.
Dutchess Zarraa Voltayre
Reborn/Zero Sum/Ancient Legacy/Jagged Legion/Feared/Nuke & Pave.
SOE kicks puppies. It's true. But they don't mean it.
I like SOE games, for better or worse. I've had mixed luck with in-game customer support. I did have one infuriating problem with guild creation in EQ1 that could have been solved if a GM had actually shown up, but I eventually worked around their stupidity and tricked them into fixing it (rather than telling me that there was nothing to be fixed. Grr.)
I think it is kind of crappy that if you need to call customer service or tech support, you have to call San Diego and they don't have a toll-free number... but I have unlimited long distance, so I am willing to sit it out. I can't get their stupid support site to work like it is supposed to, so I had to go to the phone when I had a problem with my accounts earlier this year. I think I'd have been right pissy about sitting on queue for 45 minutes if I didn't have unlimited long distance, though. The nice tech support guy did fix my problem in under 5 minutes once I got to him, anyway.
...
This is where I draw the line: __________________.
$OE are an evil corporation set on making their customers misirable, sad, and broke!. If i didn't know better i would say that $OE is set on world domination and the way they fund their program is by stealing gamers hard erned CASH!
P.S. I Saw an $OE representative stealing candy from a toddler =(
Soe made some wrong decissions but in eq2 worked hard to fix them ,new games dont look promissing .Best games that soe has are eq1 and eq2 .She must learn from the past mistakes and never do them again.
Is SOE good or bad? Let's take a look at their MMO lineup:
Everquest
Everqeust 2
Star Wars Galaxies
Matrix Online
Planetside
Vanguard
Everquets 2 is the only thing holding them up. The other games on the Station Pass are utter shite.
Also Your post didnt have War or AoC in it so most likly anything other then that will be terrible!
ZINK! To you Mmorpg community zink to you
99.00001% of the time I dont know what im saying
99.99% of the time I know I spelled the word wrong or repeated a sentence.. I did it so you can better your grammar
100.00% of the time if to many people post after my post very mad ill most likely with a 5% chance saying something like ....""
100.00% of the time I lack sleep and magical things come out of my head and type my posts for me? Please yell at the magical things not me... I am but a puppet
MMORPG.COM has worst forum editor ever exists
Everquest 2 was a pretty good game.
SWG was good in the start, but went downhill dramaticly.
The rest was pretty crappy though, but some of them was bought of for some other companies anyway, so not their fault
So O.K in bad favour.
Actually Everquest 2 seems to be the first in the line to show beta to their customers as example.
And if you think SOE is bad what do you think of EA that buried 2 MMORPGs already and has a beta client of UO out there that makes real use of the word beta for the next 3-6 months.
And the small expansions cost $10 or so?
Base on image : GREAT
Based on experinece: VERY BAD
DAKSHA - the Weaponsmith
proud member of KDS
SWG- DAKSHA, Quietus, Decebal, Deceneu -retired
EVE - Daksha - retired
WOW - Daksha - retired
COV - Daksha - retired
EQ2- Daksha - retired
SOR- Daksha - retired
Vanguard - Daksha - retired
LOTRO - Daksha - retired
AOC - Daksha - retired
Warhammer - Daksha - retired
Aion - Daksha -almost retired
Waiting for SWTOR