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Can someone explain the hate towards SOE?
WhiteknightI
Member Posts: 63
I'm not new to the MMO scene. I'd just like to know why eveyone dislikes SOE so much.
What did they mess up in the past to give them such a bad name?
Just a quick summary would be much appreciated.
Comments
I was not around for eq complaints which i have heard, but SOE is a company that lies to their player base, In SWG they made a game which the majority of players loved then took the entire game and changed nearly everything about it without even letting the player base know what they were doing, they lied about new content coming in and deleted the combat system behind their players backs. SOE has lied many times directly to their player base. For example they released an expansion to SWG it was called Trials of Obiwan and they said there would be tons of new content and creatures to tame. Then a couple of days later they deleted the creature handling profession along with tons of others. Many players refuse to play their games because of how poor they treat their players.
omg...another one of these posts...if you do a forum search there are already several threads about the same topic. This is just going to turn into another flame fest like all the others.
I just wanted a sum up of why this company is hated so much. The other threads kind of drop things about it, but don't really explain where the hate if coming from directly.
Obviously this company was hate pre-PoTBS and I'm tryin to find out why.
Obviously this company was hate pre-PoTBS and I'm tryin to find out why.
It's probably the longest story ever written. Seriously. Like, 1000-page epic. It goes back around 10 years I think and has been a non-stop roller coaster ride since then. Suffice it to say, they've done plenty to step on and piss off everyone who has ever dared to give them money over the course of recent history, save those few poor souls who still play their MMOs.
I dont love or hate SOE but i give you an answer.
First SOE made EQ and it was fabulous, my favorite game of all time. Some years into the game, im not sure how far actually, they decided to make some changes to the game that made things a bit more convienent, i.e. instant travel and centralized trade area. It seemed that they were making these changes to compete with the newer games coming out that were a little less time consuming. Many of the players didnt like these changes so they left. I ended up leaving the game after 4+ years but not because of the changes, i just figured 4+ years was enough.
Im not sure which came first so i will just go with EQ2. They launched EQ2 and it was a total mess. I preordered the game and didnt like it at all, i was back in EQ less then a month or two after getting it. They have since fixed that game and it is very popular though the sub base is not huge like WoW.
They also made SWG, and this is where the real problems start. They had a buggy but loved game for about 250K people. WoW came out and they saw how many people were playing that game and decided that simple meant tons of people. So they completely redid the game and basically hosed the 250K people that loved it before. Not cool of them. Though i think Lucas Arts played a very large part in this.
People have also had problems with their customer service department but i never did. I was also in a rather large guild and i cant recall anyone in the guild having any big problems. So i cannot confirm if it was bad or not, it was actually good for me. I was helped right away the few times i had a problem.
Mainly they are hated because they chose to change the games that they made without getting consent from the playerbase first. Which of course they did not need to do. But it would have been nice.
If SOE comes out with a game that looks interesting i will give it a shot. Right now they are working on The Agency and that doesnt interest me. If they said they were coming out with EQ3 that might peak my interest though. Or if they just redid and rereleased EQ.
I just wanted a sum up of why this company is hated so much. The other threads kind of drop things about it, but don't really explain where the hate if coming from directly.
Obviously this company was hate pre-PoTBS and I'm tryin to find out why.
Here is the short version.
SOE historically and ritually admits to not caring one iota about its players. They do really bad things, and make really poor choices. To top that off, when called out on said bad things and choices...they tend to enjoy telling everyone that they are either stupid, or unneeded. Either one is pretty awful a thing to say to ones support beam.
Oh, and they also like to buy failing IP's and then ignore them completely...forcing them to survive on skeleton crews who do little more than add a tweak here and there whilst drawing in profit over the fact they have no one to pay for its upkeep.
I just wanted a sum up of why this company is hated so much. The other threads kind of drop things about it, but don't really explain where the hate if coming from directly.
Obviously this company was hate pre-PoTBS and I'm tryin to find out why.
Here is the short version.
SOE historically and ritually admits to not caring one iota about its players. They do really bad things, and make really poor choices. To top that off, when called out on said bad things and choices...they tend to enjoy telling everyone that they are either stupid, or unneeded. Either one is pretty awful a thing to say to ones support beam.
Oh, and they also like to buy failing IP's and then ignore them completely...forcing them to survive on skeleton crews who do little more than add a tweak here and there whilst drawing in profit over the fact they have no one to pay for its upkeep.
That statement is true i guess, but only if you are one of those people who thinks the world would be better off if The Matrix Online and Vanguard would have just died vise going on the Station Access. Why should it matter that people are actually still playing those games and like them, reguardless of how much updating they get. Better to say screw them and just shut the games down.
I guess the question comes down to, Is it better to force a game to survive on a skeleton crew or just shut down. My view is if people want to play it then it is worth keeping alive.
As someone who treats SOE as just a service provider and takes or leaves their service here is my version of "events". Probably similar to the other ones but maybe with more flair and possibly shorter..
lol okay flaterring myself over now..
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away a group of developers from lucas arts and Soe made a decision to revamp a system actualy abut 6 months after release but it took them 2 years to actualy do the revamp and then they released it. Peole got mad at them because they didn't like "change" and left. Most people to be honest have forgotten about it or taken it in perspective and gone on with their lives. Others however with more vindictive personalities and unable to let go of the past and who have not learned the art of "forgivness" have decided to continue on a 3 year long vendetta towards this faceless corporation in an effort to try to "hurt them back". I would honestly ignore it. All the qualities they exhibit are not positive or good human traits and that should go a long way to helping you realize that this hatred is at this point well baseless. The past is the past WAAAY past and they have chosen to not move on.
I think part of the issue is also the fact that the cause of their hatred and to their utter total disgust the object of their vendetta still is alive and kicking. Albeit not as popular as it was when released however they fail to acknowledge things like the fact that the customers were leaving anyhow so its likely that no matter what sony did with the release of WoW the client base would not be much larger then it is now as people moved on to newer games in bright new shiny boxes.
The hate has a reason however it is out of proportion at this point in time and should not exist and dominate certain message boards and permeat every thread as it at times does. Ignore it as trying to understand it will leave you confused and possibly with far less brain cells as you are unable to solve this strange phenomenon with any rational explanation or solutions because at this point its an irrational hate based on pure emotion and nothing more.
I just wanted a sum up of why this company is hated so much. The other threads kind of drop things about it, but don't really explain where the hate if coming from directly.
Obviously this company was hate pre-PoTBS and I'm tryin to find out why.
Here is the short version.
SOE historically and ritually admits to not caring one iota about its players. They do really bad things, and make really poor choices. To top that off, when called out on said bad things and choices...they tend to enjoy telling everyone that they are either stupid, or unneeded. Either one is pretty awful a thing to say to ones support beam.
Oh, and they also like to buy failing IP's and then ignore them completely...forcing them to survive on skeleton crews who do little more than add a tweak here and there whilst drawing in profit over the fact they have no one to pay for its upkeep.
That statement is true i guess, but only if you are one of those people who thinks the world would be better off if The Matrix Online and Vanguard would have just died vise going on the Station Access. Why should it matter that people are actually still playing those games and like them, reguardless of how much updating they get. Better to say screw them and just shut the games down.
I guess the question comes down to, Is it better to force a game to survive on a skeleton crew or just shut down. My view is if people want to play it then it is worth keeping alive.
I would answer with:
Its better for those playing the game for their game of choice to receive attention and care just as any other MMO would. True, some of them would have died otherwise. I think that if you are going to buy something like an MMO...you aught be ready to put at least SOME effort into making it better. SOE does not do this...such things would detract from their OWN games and the money being pumped into those. I understand WHY...but its not exactly right either. They all hemorrhage players terribly.
Yeah just ignore a company that craps on its players over and over again. Don't worry about them...let them get away with it. Sounds like an excellent plan.
This is interesting. I ask cause I haven't seen such passionate hate toward a company before in the MMO areas.
Keep coming with the reasons for SOE hate if you have anything else to add.
No HATE here (from me anyway)
HATE is an emotion I reserve for things I can see, touch or interact with on a personal level.
Businesses are entities in the legal sense and while the people within them may be worthy of emotion, they themselves are not.
I have had nothing to do with SOE prior to this game - never played SWG or Vangard or any others.
But, my observations of SOE in relation to THIS GAME have been very bad.
Why?
FLS contracted Platform Publishing (SOE) to do a job for them.
No matter how you look at it, SOE's performance was sub-standard. FLS ended up having to chase them up on everything and in some cases step in and do it for them.
It does not matter if PotBS was good or bad - Platform Publishing (SOE) was contracted to perform a task - a task they performed poorly.
So, do I HATE SOE? No.
Do I think they are incompetent? YES.
Given a choice - will I do business with them? NO.
Businesses are entities in the legal sense and while the people within them may be worthy of emotion, they themselves are not.
Nothing says irony like spelling ideot wrong.
Make up your own mind. They're games. If you don't like the game, don't play it. If you do, who cares who made it? There's an infinite amount of whine in the gaming culture. You'd be happier and better off ignoring every single bit of it.
MMOs Played: EQ 1&2, DAoC, SWG, Planetside, WoW, GW, CoX, DDO, EVE, Vanguard, TR
Playing: WAR
Awaiting 40k Online and wishing for Battletech Online
fer gads sakes man, all the swg stuff was on a test server, and i remember hearing about it before it went live the cu didnt just magically appear one day when i woke up. Listen to you guys contradict myself makes me sick, example is in this thread, IE. Soe buys games and runs em on a skeletal crew, sooooo....they tried to change a game that was dieing anyways to make it better and everyone flips cause there trying to do something,
playing eq2 and two worlds
I definatly find swg more enjoyable now and much more colorful and animated, do you guys really miss doing 200 piket missions where you stand there and spin and kill repetativley? Would someone please tell me what was so great about swg pre-cu, it was horrid, bug ridden, unbalanced for pvp, exploits galore
The tier system? was this what made swg great? (truly everyone had the same dang build In the same mix of professions)
The meaningless caves? was this what made it so great? (nuttin to do except sit at the bottom and run a looping kill/loot macro)
I realllly cant think of anything that made swg great pre-cu, except that it had the name swg,
I truly dont think most of the people that logged in after cu really tried to play it through and as for a lot of people they were already venturing into other mmo's and used the cu to jump ship to play what they got into full time.
The big thing i seen that the cu did was add content , filled gaps (like used the caves as part of the storyline and made them useful and stopped all the aa atachments that fell down there so farmers wouldnt sit there for hours) Made the storyline of which that is starwars more colorful and put you in the storyline instead of ploppin ya on tat , here ya go kill a million whomp rats, yer here to kill rebels or the empire, hope ya can feel starwarsy.
playing eq2 and two worlds
Read My forum. you find out why people hate SOE
Yes, Star Wars Galexies
MAGA
The short, short version of the fallout from SWG:
SWG is the crown point for the negative biased with SOE.
SWG originally had 32 professions with a skill based system. Although it had bugs and design flaws, mostly everyone will agree to say that SWG had great potential. To help overcome those problems, promises were made to conduct revamps/fixes about every month to two months. The two revamps that never occurred however were the Combat Revamp and the Smuggler Revamp.
During for about a year and a half, statements were made to the effect that the Combat Revamp was being coded, just around the corner, about one more month, etc. Similar hints were made for Smugglers.
Well, the truth was leaked, actually slipped out by loose lips that the Combat Revamp was going to be delayed by another year. Come to find out that the Combat Revamp had never made it to code, it was still in the high level development area. This fallout lead to the Coordinator Summit to help restore trust. What the Coordinators saw (player volunteers) was designs of the Combat Upgrade, which was not what the players were told of the Combat Revamp. The Combat Upgrade and Revamp were completely different.
But wait there's more...
In SWG the customer service was (and I believe still is), "the customer is mostly wrong all of the time." Meaning, that should a system glitch occur, oh say a lost of 20 million credits, they are gone. No method or process to restore.
"Combat Medics are working as intended," even though a single medic can kill waves of players...
Now enter the Combat Upgrade:
When the Combat Upgrade occurred, all equipment was converted to the new system. And a fair share of the equipment was made into junk. That 5 million Flame Thrower, rendered useless. Sorry, have a nice day. But fortunately SOE/LA did inform players that the Combat Upgrade was coming up and to expect some cool changes.
The dreaded NGE (New Game Enhancements):
Well I can go with a revised combat system being more on the twitch, but unfortunately how the NGE was executed and of the other enhancements is what really did the trick of this perceived hatred.
There use to be 32 skill based professions, with profession combinations. Now there are 9 Classes, all level base.
And giving information of the NGE about 10 days prior to launch. That is what is called Poor Change Management. Had SOE/LA provided say 6 months of time to inform and take in feedback about the NGE, then the change would have been more smoother. There are people who don't read the forums and were uninformed of the NGE... imagine the surprise to them.
Yes, change is good; but people are resistant to changes. People however can become acceptable to the changes if informed and engaged in the process of the proposed changes. SOE/LA failed to do this, giving only 10 days.
Again that is the short, short version.
I left out a lot of other stuff.
And that is why...
Conservatives' pessimism is conducive to their happiness in three ways. First, they are rarely surprised -- they are right more often than not about the course of events. Second, when they are wrong they are happy to be so. Third, because pessimistic conservatives put not their faith in princes -- government -- they accept that happiness is a function of fending for oneself. They believe that happiness is an activity -- it is inseparable from the pursuit of happiness.
If someone asked me why there was a lot of hate towards SOE, my quick answere would be SWG.
After SWG, see customer service. I don't just mean the folks that try to help you if/when you have an issue with game play/technical issue or an issue with your account. I mean the people who are supposed to listen, respond, and mold the game into something the playerbase has really asked for, wants, and then approves of once they get it.
The problems with Vanguard, MatrixOnline, SWG, etc.... well, the blame ultimately hits SOE.
Yeah just ignore a company that craps on its players over and over again. Don't worry about them...let them get away with it. Sounds like an excellent plan.
I'm one of their customers and I dont feel anymore 'crapped' on then I do with NCSOFT with their gold farmer issues and insecure website that led to widespread hacking which they refused to help their customers with.
I pay sony for 1 station access pass plus 1 stand alone account for one game that I have two accounts/characters in. I dont feel crapped on in fact I have fun. When I dont like one of the games on the station pass I simply stop playing it. POTBS is an example of that. I dont like that game and I stopped playing it however since my subscription didn't go up one iota from what it previously was I lost only the initial software purchase. That wont be the first time I wasted money on a game. I have wasted money on two games now aside from this one and neither of them came from sony. So again I think your out of proportion because in all honesty I have been treated WORSE much worse by one of their rival companies as a result of a security hole IN THEIR site for which my accounts were completely totalled, characters completely stripped of everything and quite literally naked and penniless. With sony at least if something happens and they can trace it the stuff is returned to you after a lengthy invetstigation. With this other company I got a form letter and my account to this day remains stripped and bare. So call it what you will they aren't doing any more "crappping" then any other company out there. So unless you want to become a hermit and live on a desert island and not buy a single item made by a single company your going to have to get your head around the fact that although they screwed up its over. They admitted to screwing up in as much as any corporation would without loosing face. Everything and everyone around you has moved on its over and its time to let go of the hate because its become a behaviour that is not normal to be honset and in all my life I have NEVER EVER seen anything like i have seen over this single one issue. I have been burned by other companies WORSE then sony has ever done with me. If I have issues I simply stop paying and playing. If in the future I see an improvement I might return. When it comes to being burnt I would say in the scheme of things I'm not even slightly singed when it came to sony. I have been completely whimilated on the other hand from NCSOFT and I dont go around to all their games trying to find ways to convince everyone around me how bad they are. People draw their own conclusions over time. What does happen however is that since the hatred is irrational and not based on any present action only a three year old revamp that some people hated it makes no sense to carry it on. It ended long ago and at this point the correct thing would be to move on.
Well I definently felt crapped on by the whole CU/NGE debacle. Say what you will but it was about the lowest thing that ever happened to an MMO community. I'm sure SOE wished they could have that time back as it has certainly haunted them ever since.
I think that just about sums up the last few years in a nutshell.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
All they did was try to change a game that was dying anyways to make it better, you say. An interesting way to think of what SOE did in SWG. Here's what you seem to be missing. I don't have time for a complete list so a summary will have to do:
They advertised revamps for squad leaders and rangers, and new features for Creature Handlers. People paid for all that was advertised in a new expansion. Immediately after payment was received for things promised in two dev chats, all of the professions mentioned were deleted. People felt badly misled. Customers discussed a class action lawsuit and were given a refund for the expansion. However, SOE, as far as I know, kept all of the subscription money people paid to enjoy the features that SOE deleted.
Many people, as a result, feel that a gross injustice was done, and that it hasn't been duly compensated to this day.
That's one issue. Another is what SOE did the virtual community that was SWG. They encouraged people to build their characters, make friends, get married, build cities and communities, unlock the mystery of the jedi etc. People of course did all of this. Then on one day, all of this was nuked by something called the NGE. Most of the professions people mastered were were simply deleted. The quests they had been working on for years (yes years worth of actual quests) were removed from the game. All of this quest progress was negated. Those that unlocked the mystery of the jedi, found that it was all for nothing. Most of their force powers were also deleted, and jedi became a starting profession. Many of the new items in the new expansion were rendered useless. Combat attributes that they modified ceased to exist. Again, simply removed from the game. Buy the new expansion to tame new creatures they were told. Then creature handler was deleted. The announcement for all the deletions came just 2 days after the relase of the expansion with all the new creatures to tame.
If that's not enough information for you. LEC and SOE told everyone they were making the game better. In addition to the problem of misleading marketting, and all of the losses I've mentioned, the NGE rendered chat and movement systems both broken. Combat abilities simply didn't fire, and heals healed enemies.
If that's still not enough for you, we could talk about how people were invited to provide feedback on these changes on the forums. However, when they did, their feedback was moved, locked or deleted and they were banned from posting.
I could go on, but if anyone doesn't get the picture yet, I expect they simply don't want to.
All they did was try to change a game that was dying anyways to make it better, you say. An interesting way to think of what SOE did in SWG. Here's what you seem to be missing. I don't have time for a complete list so a summary will have to do:
They advertised revamps for squad leaders and rangers, and new features for Creature Handlers. People paid for all that was advertised in a new expansion. Immediately after payment was received for things promised in two dev chats, all of the professions mentioned were deleted. People felt badly misled. Customers discussed a class action lawsuit and were given a refund for the expansion. However, SOE, as far as I know, kept all of the subscription money people paid to enjoy the features that SOE deleted.
Many people, as a result, feel that a gross injustice was done, and that it hasn't been duly compensated to this day.
That's one issue. Another is what SOE did the virtual community that was SWG. They encouraged people to build their characters, make friends, get married, build cities and communities, unlock the mystery of the jedi etc. People of course did all of this. Then on one day, all of this was nuked by something called the NGE. Most of the professions people mastered were were simply deleted. The quests they had been working on for years (yes years worth of actual quests) were removed from the game. All of this quest progress was negated. Those that unlocked the mystery of the jedi, found that it was all for nothing. Most of their force powers were also deleted, and jedi became a starting profession. Many of the new items in the new expansion were rendered useless. Combat attributes that they modified ceased to exist. Again, simply removed from the game. Buy the new expansion to tame new creatures they were told. Then creature handler was deleted. The announcement for all the deletions came just 2 days after the relase of the expansion with all the new creatures to tame.
If that's not enough information for you. LEC and SOE told everyone they were making the game better. In addition to the problem of misleading marketting, and all of the losses I've mentioned, the NGE rendered chat and movement systems both broken. Combat abilities simply didn't fire, and heals healed enemies.
If that's still not enough for you, we could talk about how people were invited to provide feedback on these changes on the forums. However, when they did, their feedback was moved, locked or deleted and they were banned from posting.
I could go on, but if anyone doesn't get the picture yet, I expect they simply don't want to.
Yea don't undestand people that cant grasp what you just said...And SOE's customer service is a freakin joke lol. They yell at customers for disagreeing with how their games are panning out. Its just horrible, im even surprised at the amount of people still playing their games.
I also had first hand experience with credits just going poof same with my friend. SOE did nothing and said we must have spent them. Yet we log off one day from mission gridning and then next day we log on and wow 5m credits gone.
All i can say is no no no, not god bless Smedly. Its God Dam Smedly! God Dam Smedly!
MAGA