Ya, I know. SOE with over 10 million concurrent subscribers with FreeRealms averaging nearly 3x the subscription model with F2P per customer and Blizzard with nearly 13 million concurrent paid subscribers and approaching $2 Billion a year in revenue, ya... they have both definately lost it and below average. Both companies should be shutting down really soon.
If Free Realms had 10 million subscribers then SOE would not have just laid off 1/3 of their entire work force, closed down 3 of their game development studios and terminated a mmo project that was already 5 years into development.
Free Realms would also have more than 10 servers and at least 1 of them would be able to hit medium or heavy load if they had anything near 100,000 active players.
Right now there are 35 total people using the free realms forums.
Take it up with SOE, they are the ones who advertise 10 million subscribers for FreeRealms, not me. I'm just passing along the info.
So SOE claiming they have 10 million registered accounts (not subscribers) to Free Realms cancels out SOE firing a third of their employees, shutting down several studios and canceling an MMO?
Ya, I know. SOE with over 10 million concurrent subscribers with FreeRealms averaging nearly 3x the subscription model with F2P per customer and Blizzard with nearly 13 million concurrent paid subscribers and approaching $2 Billion a year in revenue, ya... they have both definately lost it and below average. Both companies should be shutting down really soon.
If Free Realms had 10 million subscribers then SOE would not have just laid off 1/3 of their entire work force, closed down 3 of their game development studios and terminated a mmo project that was already 5 years into development.
Free Realms would also have more than 10 servers and at least 1 of them would be able to hit medium or heavy load if they had anything near 100,000 active players.
Right now there are 35 total people using the free realms forums.
Take it up with SOE, they are the ones who advertise 10 million subscribers for FreeRealms, not me. I'm just passing along the info.
So SOE claiming they have 10 million registered accounts (not subscribers) to Free Realms cancels out SOE firing a third of their employees, shutting down several studios and canceling an MMO?
Interesting.
Blame the hackers for the firing of employees, shutting down studios, and cancelling of a game. When your code is stolen, sometimes it's best just to shut it down than dealing with what would happen from stolen code. Not only did SOE lose money while they were down for over a month, they also had to make it up to their fans with free time. As you are finding out, there is no such thing as free in business.
Ya, I know. SOE with over 10 million concurrent subscribers with FreeRealms averaging nearly 3x the subscription model with F2P per customer and Blizzard with nearly 13 million concurrent paid subscribers and approaching $2 Billion a year in revenue, ya... they have both definately lost it and below average. Both companies should be shutting down really soon.
If Free Realms had 10 million subscribers then SOE would not have just laid off 1/3 of their entire work force, closed down 3 of their game development studios and terminated a mmo project that was already 5 years into development.
Free Realms would also have more than 10 servers and at least 1 of them would be able to hit medium or heavy load if they had anything near 100,000 active players.
Right now there are 35 total people using the free realms forums.
Take it up with SOE, they are the ones who advertise 10 million subscribers for FreeRealms, not me. I'm just passing along the info.
So SOE claiming they have 10 million registered accounts (not subscribers) to Free Realms cancels out SOE firing a third of their employees, shutting down several studios and canceling an MMO?
Interesting.
Blame the hackers for the firing of employees, shutting down studios, and cancelling of a game. When your code is stolen, sometimes it's best just to shut it down than dealing with what would happen from stolen code. Not only did SOE lose money while they were down for over a month, they also had to make it up to their fans with free time. As you are finding out, there is no such thing as free in business.
All those events happened prior to the hackers infiltrating SoE.
Ya, I know. SOE with over 10 million concurrent subscribers with FreeRealms averaging nearly 3x the subscription model with F2P per customer and Blizzard with nearly 13 million concurrent paid subscribers and approaching $2 Billion a year in revenue, ya... they have both definately lost it and below average. Both companies should be shutting down really soon.
If Free Realms had 10 million subscribers then SOE would not have just laid off 1/3 of their entire work force, closed down 3 of their game development studios and terminated a mmo project that was already 5 years into development.
Free Realms would also have more than 10 servers and at least 1 of them would be able to hit medium or heavy load if they had anything near 100,000 active players.
Right now there are 35 total people using the free realms forums.
Take it up with SOE, they are the ones who advertise 10 million subscribers for FreeRealms, not me. I'm just passing along the info.
So SOE claiming they have 10 million registered accounts (not subscribers) to Free Realms cancels out SOE firing a third of their employees, shutting down several studios and canceling an MMO?
Interesting.
Blame the hackers for the firing of employees, shutting down studios, and cancelling of a game. When your code is stolen, sometimes it's best just to shut it down than dealing with what would happen from stolen code. Not only did SOE lose money while they were down for over a month, they also had to make it up to their fans with free time. As you are finding out, there is no such thing as free in business.
You do release SOE fired a third of their employees, shut down several major studios and canceled an MMO a month before the hacks?
Ya, I know. SOE with over 10 million concurrent subscribers with FreeRealms averaging nearly 3x the subscription model with F2P per customer and Blizzard with nearly 13 million concurrent paid subscribers and approaching $2 Billion a year in revenue, ya... they have both definately lost it and below average. Both companies should be shutting down really soon.
If Free Realms had 10 million subscribers then SOE would not have just laid off 1/3 of their entire work force, closed down 3 of their game development studios and terminated a mmo project that was already 5 years into development.
Free Realms would also have more than 10 servers and at least 1 of them would be able to hit medium or heavy load if they had anything near 100,000 active players.
Right now there are 35 total people using the free realms forums.
Take it up with SOE, they are the ones who advertise 10 million subscribers for FreeRealms, not me. I'm just passing along the info.
So SOE claiming they have 10 million registered accounts (not subscribers) to Free Realms cancels out SOE firing a third of their employees, shutting down several studios and canceling an MMO?
Interesting.
Blame the hackers for the firing of employees, shutting down studios, and cancelling of a game. When your code is stolen, sometimes it's best just to shut it down than dealing with what would happen from stolen code. Not only did SOE lose money while they were down for over a month, they also had to make it up to their fans with free time. As you are finding out, there is no such thing as free in business.
You do release SOE fired a third of their employees, shut down several major studios and canceled an MMO a month before the hacks?
Yes. Point is, they are hating on SOE. SImply put, everything in the economy is tanking right now except the energy sector. Even Blizzard is feeling the heat. You can't call SOE fail because they are taking the same measures to save themselves as the rest of America is doing.
Yes. Point is, they are hating on SOE. SImply put, everything in the economy is tanking right now except the energy sector. Even Blizzard is feeling the heat. You can't call SOE fail because they are taking the same measures to save themselves as the rest of America is doing.
How many other game developers fired a third of their employees recently? Why do keep comparing SOE to Blizzard? They aren't even in the same league in terms of profitability and size.
Just a thoughtful post, for contemplation. 2 of the biggest Game makers, and arguably 2 of the better "early" MMORPG developers are now in kneejerk reaction mode and struggling to put out quality games. For those not recognizing the company names, SOE created Everquest and Square created the Final Fantasy series of which FFXI is one of my all time favorite MMORPGs.
When, where, how and why did these 2 behemoths lose their "touch" on making great games?
Did World of Warcraft do it vicariously to them? Or was it a change in management, developers, or other company movements? Was it a loss of passion and a scramble for money? Was it just the times changing and they weren't able to make the transition?
I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks about these 2 former Titans of the industry. Lets try to keep the I hate SOE/Square posts to a minimum though and approach this from a constructive viewpoint, not a personal/emotional one.
For even further discussion, what can they do to get the "magic" back, if at all?
SOE was always crap,
Square Enix however suffered from attempting to combine an MMO (XIV) and a single player game (XIII) on the same engine which the former did not get enough time to develop on before release resuling in an MMO that was missing a lot of features and lacking content. I wouldn't say they are out of touch with people anymore than they ever were (which means if you were a fan of XI you probably like a lot of their decisions, but the majority of the MMO community will never), in fact today they are a million times more engaging with the community than they ever were with XI.
I have admiration for Square Enix in that they are continuing to develop with a full team on XIV despite its troubles after launch, and once they fix their engine to fully support an MMO properly they have a lot of stuff planned that will appeal to former XI fans (maybe other people too, I don't know or care). Most people on this site may never play it again, but that shouldn't matter if they can pull off what they have planned I see it becoming a great game in a similiar fashion as XI's overall post-launch development.
From an outsider's perspective it looks like SE got to compartmentalized as a company, and the head did not know what the body was doing.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Yes. Point is, they are hating on SOE. SImply put, everything in the economy is tanking right now except the energy sector. Even Blizzard is feeling the heat. You can't call SOE fail because they are taking the same measures to save themselves as the rest of America is doing.
How many other game developers fired a third of their employees recently? Why do keep comparing SOE to Blizzard? They aren't even in the same league in terms of profitability and size.
Ask Sigil, ask Mythic, ask Cryptic Studios, ask a whole lot of folks out there that have lost their jobs. Don't see you trolling EA when they cut out studios and layoff entire staffs sending only the very best to other parts of the company. Point is, people want to hate on SOE and Blizzard, I'll hate right back. Nothing wrong with those two companies. Sure, they both have made some bad choices, but so has every other company out there.
A bit over a year ago a person I knew from overseas was visiting. I never knew they had played Planetside and he started going on and on about how awesome it had been. I honestly had never paid much attention to planetside but he made it sound really good... different than most SOE games.
That's part of it to me.. in fact that part is the entire industry. You ever have an 8 bit computer.. did you game "back in the day"??
Just think of the wide variety of games that came out.. and we're not talking about 1 or 2 good games a year. It was hard to find enough money in the budget each month... ya amazingly once upon a time there was something worth buying every month.
Then again not everybody was making MMO's so the production times were shorter.
So anyway you have a severe lack of variety in todays market.. that affects everyone. As a customer you can only buy the same basic thing for so long. I mean this isn't a car.. knowing that you are going to replace it with the same thing. Take your favorite book .. read it. Then read it again and again and again and again.. imagine paying full price to read that same book every time. How long would it be your favorite book?
So on top of that Sony pissed off a lot of people. I'm not talking about a CU or NGE.
I remember playing EQ with a friend and there was some stuff going on in game. I'll just put it this way.. before I was on the interest team in UO I was a blue robe.. and I can guarantee there would have been bans for what went on.
In EQ.. GM shows up and asks what we want them to do. More or less the response was to enforce their EULA/ToS.. to which the GM said "these are our servers, if you don't like it leave".
They just seemed very arrogant because at the time who did they really compete with. Well I was always more a fan of UO so I just went back there.
Hell Blizzard had the same attitude towards its customers.. probably still does.
Rehash the same crap... treat your customers like crap.. eventually that catches up. When you are selling an optional form of entertainment... I don't actually have to buy your product. It doesn't affect me to not buy it.. but it certainly affects the retail end of things.
That said... I did go back to EQ around 2002 with a friend and we played that premium server that was like 40 bux a month. GM's treated you like gold there... actually did the things GM's should do etc
Come to think of it.. if a company made a game I liked.. and wanted to charge 40 bux a month but would actually enforce their rules.. I'd pay that much and play for a long time.
Sorry that I kind of got off track..
um ya so.. anyway variety in your products.. and treating your customers decently would get the "touch" back for most companies.
Square Enix is easy, they starting loosing their touch after FF VII was released and have slowling been slidding downward ever since...
SOE is kinda harder. They do have an habit of making too many expansions for their games and raising the levels too often, it makes old content pretty useless and fast passed by and constantly upsets the balance. Coding have always been their weakest point. But both EQ 1 & 2 are fine games. SWG had a great idea but they messed it up worse than any other company I ever seen. DCU is a fine game... for consoles, they shouldn't have made it for PC as well but instead focused on PS3.
Their best game is of course Everquest and McQuaide might have megalomania but he do have interesting ideas. If they go back and think what makes EQ fun EQ Next might actually be their comeback.
But they really lost it with their addition of an itemshop in EQ2, and the worst part is that almost all companies followed after soon after that.
Both SOE and SE might come back but both companies really need to look back and think about what made them great in the beginning and mix that with new ideas instead of just continue doing what they always done, but loosing a bit imagination everytime. EQ 3 needs to feel like a mix of old EQ and a new modern game we never played before. The next Final fantasy game must bring back the magic of FF VII but with a more modern combat system.
Clearly have both companies had a bad couple of years now but they can still turn around again.
Yes. Point is, they are hating on SOE. SImply put, everything in the economy is tanking right now except the energy sector. Even Blizzard is feeling the heat. You can't call SOE fail because they are taking the same measures to save themselves as the rest of America is doing.
How many other game developers fired a third of their employees recently? Why do keep comparing SOE to Blizzard? They aren't even in the same league in terms of profitability and size.
Ask Sigil, ask Mythic, ask Cryptic Studios, ask a whole lot of folks out there that have lost their jobs. Don't see you trolling EA when they cut out studios and layoff entire staffs sending only the very best to other parts of the company. Point is, people want to hate on SOE and Blizzard, I'll hate right back. Nothing wrong with those two companies. Sure, they both have made some bad choices, but so has every other company out there.
Of those companies which ones fired 1/3 of their employees or more in the last year or so like SOE? And SOE makes bad choice after bad choice.
Of those companies which ones fired 1/3 of their employees or more in the last year or so like SOE? And SOE makes bad choice after bad choice.
I'm going to put this to you in simple business terms. SOE is part of SONY! Guess what, SOE reports to SONY. Sony tells them to cut X millions from the budget, stuff is getting the axe. This is the problem with ALL the studios today when they ALL get bought up by a few big corporations. Regardless of how much or little you made, it's about growth over last year. Those that FAIL to grow obviously need to CUT expenses, regardless. This is why gamers and companies DO NOT mix well. Bottom line to a gamer is FUN. Bottom line to a CEO is money to shareholders. If you don't beat last year, you are failing regardless of what you have coming down the pipe. You think Mythic wanted to release WAR like it did? No, but it had no choice as EA calls the shots. Same with TOR at BioWare. CEOs of companies like SONY, Activision, Atari, EA... they all make more cash by cutting jobs and projects and closing studios. The more they "save" the parent company, the bigger their checks are. So stop blaming the devs and blame it on the CEOs of the companies that own them.
Ask Sigil, ask Mythic, ask Cryptic Studios, ask a whole lot of folks out there that have lost their jobs. Don't see you trolling EA when they cut out studios and layoff entire staffs sending only the very best to other parts of the company. Point is, people want to hate on SOE and Blizzard, I'll hate right back. Nothing wrong with those two companies. Sure, they both have made some bad choices, but so has every other company out there.
This is the third straight year in a row that SOE has laid off a percentage of its staff. SOE was making bad decisions that drove away the majority of their playerbase years before the economy had a down turn.
Blizzard keeps earning more money than the year before.
Sigil went out of business before the economic crash.
Mythic released their failure before the economic crash.
Cryptics CEO was the VicePresident of SOE for many years just before heading over to Cryptic and repeating the same exact mistakes there.
As a matter of fact, that gaming industry is very strong during the economic downturn.
SEO was in the situation is was in long before any of the excuses you are making. Long before the hacking. Long before the economic downturn.
Of those companies which ones fired 1/3 of their employees or more in the last year or so like SOE? And SOE makes bad choice after bad choice.
I'm going to put this to you in simple business terms. SOE is part of SONY! Guess what, SOE reports to SONY. Sony tells them to cut X millions from the budget, stuff is getting the axe. This is the problem with ALL the studios today when they ALL get bought up by a few big corporations. Regardless of how much or little you made, it's about growth over last year. Those that FAIL to grow obviously need to CUT expenses, regardless. This is why gamers and companies DO NOT mix well. Bottom line to a gamer is FUN. Bottom line to a CEO is money to shareholders. If you don't beat last year, you are failing regardless of what you have coming down the pipe. You think Mythic wanted to release WAR like it did? No, but it had no choice as EA calls the shots. Same with TOR at BioWare. CEOs of companies like SONY, Activision, Atari, EA... they all make more cash by cutting jobs and projects and closing studios. The more they "save" the parent company, the bigger their checks are. So stop blaming the devs and blame it on the CEOs of the companies that own them.
It's true SOE is apart of Sony. Having said that SOE hasn't exactly released a successful MMO in awhile. I wonder if SOE even broke even on DCUO yet. SOE is more than likely spending more than it's receiving via revenue with two MMOs in development.
It's true SOE is apart of Sony. Having said that SOE hasn't exactly released a successful MMO in awhile. I wonder if SOE even broke even on DCUO yet. SOE is more than likely spending more than it's receiving via revenue with two MMOs in development.
Agreed. Saying that, SOE doesn't have to when it buys up games for pennies on the dollar and just collects the cash. Saying that, all the other games they are creating is a BIG reason why the cuts happened. It cannot be cheap to develop many games at the same time. To me, that is a HUGE mistake. Look at the fubar DDO turned into when LOTRO was announced. LOTRO turned fubar and F2P, come to find out Turbine is working on another MMORPG. Look at CCP, same thing. The problem is, these companies try to do too much with too little and cuts are the end result when growth isn't achieved for parent companies or setbacks in development happen. CEOs do not respond well to less than expected growth. That means less millions in bonus cash for them.
This is the third straight year in a row that SOE has laid off a percentage of its staff. SOE was making bad decisions that drove away the majority of their playerbase years before the economy had a down turn.
Blizzard keeps earning more money than the year before.
Sigil went out of business before the economic crash.
Mythic released their failure before the economic crash.
Cryptics CEO was the VicePresident of SOE for many years just before heading over to Cryptic and repeating the same exact mistakes there.
As a matter of fact, that gaming industry is very strong during the economic downturn.
SEO was in the situation is was in long before any of the excuses you are making. Long before the hacking. Long before the economic downturn.
I am not sure about Blizzard this year unless they release D3 this autumn. After all did they loose half a million Wow players so far and Starcraft sales were better last year. Still, they are not exactly laying off people.
Otherwise I agree. SOE have gone pretty badly for a while now even if the hacking thing didn't help them.
I also don't think Cryptic is repeating SOEs old misstake, they are making new ones instead. Like getting a very popular license, then make it into a half assed CORPG with both itemshop and monthly fees, I don't remember SOE doing that.
SIGILs problam was also that they had really bad programmers, and I mean awful. A good lead programmer and they might actually have released VG instead of selling it to SOE in beta shape. One of the SOE programmers that fixed the game up said it had the worst code he ever had seen.
MMOs are risky business and many companies don't cut it or live on the edge. SOE do actually have some good ideas and with a better lead designer (someone like Strain) and good coding they can still rise from the ashes. But I wish they could fire or move Smed, he continue to make bad decisions.
It's true SOE is apart of Sony. Having said that SOE hasn't exactly released a successful MMO in awhile. I wonder if SOE even broke even on DCUO yet. SOE is more than likely spending more than it's receiving via revenue with two MMOs in development.
Agreed. Saying that, SOE doesn't have to when it buys up games for pennies on the dollar and just collects the cash. Saying that, all the other games they are creating is a BIG reason why the cuts happened. It cannot be cheap to develop many games at the same time. To me, that is a HUGE mistake. Look at the fubar DDO turned into when LOTRO was announced. LOTRO turned fubar and F2P, come to find out Turbine is working on another MMORPG. Look at CCP, same thing. The problem is, these companies try to do too much with too little and cuts are the end result when growth isn't achieved for parent companies or setbacks in development happen. CEOs do not respond well to less than expected growth. That means less millions in bonus cash for them.
My point is SOE was a once one of the 'big boys' in terms of MMOs. There was a year and half time period in the mid-2000s when they had the #1 and #3 MMOs in terms of subscriptions.
SOE has fallen and fallen hard. They couldn't even fund new MMOs with the revenue from existing MMOs. The new 'big boys' can. SOE needs to release a successful and popular MMO and soon otherwise they won't be around much longer.
It's true SOE is apart of Sony. Having said that SOE hasn't exactly released a successful MMO in awhile. I wonder if SOE even broke even on DCUO yet. SOE is more than likely spending more than it's receiving via revenue with two MMOs in development.
Agreed. Saying that, SOE doesn't have to when it buys up games for pennies on the dollar and just collects the cash. Saying that, all the other games they are creating is a BIG reason why the cuts happened. It cannot be cheap to develop many games at the same time. To me, that is a HUGE mistake. Look at the fubar DDO turned into when LOTRO was announced. LOTRO turned fubar and F2P, come to find out Turbine is working on another MMORPG. Look at CCP, same thing. The problem is, these companies try to do too much with too little and cuts are the end result when growth isn't achieved for parent companies or setbacks in development happen. CEOs do not respond well to less than expected growth. That means less millions in bonus cash for them.
DDO didn't turn fubar when LOTRO was announced. It was fubar when it was in open beta and they wouldn't listen to people tell them it wasn't worth a monthly sub. A year or so later, they finally realized it and made the game FTP, and boom completely turned it around, although personally, I still think it sucks. That's beside the point though, LOTRO didn't have any effect on DDO.
The problem with SOE is their games have gone downhill the moment WoW launched and they decided to try and copy it's success. Which means, they saw the $$ Blizzard was pulling in and they went nuts. In a way it makes sense, from a business point of view, but they made the mistake of changing a game to suit it instead of just building a game to suit it. Every one of their games since EQ2 has been complete junk. The only thing smart they ever did was buy VG, but now they are messing that up by not developing it and throwing money at it. VG is more like EQ1 than EQ2 and is it's true spiritual successor.
Bah, and now we have news today of a microtransaction store opening up in DCUO. A game that is already on the downward slope and instead of adding content or fixing the game they add an E store? GREED is SOE's problem, failing economy or not. I'm tired of these corporate schticks thinking they can sell cheap product with no effort on their part. They'll learn when they are going bankrupt, the fools.
History has shown, QUALITY products, created with a ton of passion, sell very well. This copy/pasted casual junk we're getting these days in the form of DCUO, Champions Online, STO, Free Realms, these MOBA's, are all half-assed, money hungry attempts to grab your wallet, not your heart.
[1] I am not sure about Blizzard this year unless they release D3 this autumn. After all did they loose half a million Wow players so far and Starcraft sales were better last year. Still, they are not exactly laying off people.
Otherwise I agree. SOE have gone pretty badly for a while now even if the hacking thing didn't help them.
[2] I also don't think Cryptic is repeating SOEs old misstake, they are making new ones instead. Like getting a very popular license, then make it into a half assed CORPG with both itemshop and monthly fees, I don't remember SOE doing that.
[3] SIGILs problam was also that they had really bad programmers, and I mean awful. A good lead programmer and they might actually have released VG instead of selling it to SOE in beta shape. One of the SOE programmers that fixed the game up said it had the worst code he ever had seen.
[4] MMOs are risky business and many companies don't cut it or live on the edge. SOE do actually have some good ideas and with a better lead designer (someone like Strain) and good coding they can still rise from the ashes. But I wish they could fire or move Smed, he continue to make bad decisions.
[1]
Perhaps blizzard doesn't make as much this year as last, but their business has certainly been booming during the economic downturn as have other game companies. They point was that the problems of SOE predate the troubles in the economy.
[2]
SOE has a nasty habit of releasing incomplete games/expansions, ignoring the issues for to long, terrible communication with their customers and a very heavy focus on Cash Shop money grabs that only further their problems. Cryptic followed in those footsteps pretty well and to some extent accelerated those issues. It was pretty shocking how similar the two companies operated.
[3]
Yeah, Sigil could of and should have. Very dissapointing.
[4]
SOE has a lot of great ideas and their games have lots of potential. Seeing the legs constantly get cut from underneath them by poor management decisions is very saddening.
Heh , Square lost it's touch ever since they replaced the "Soft" by "Enix".
For SOE , actually I don't know , and never really cared.
But in all seriousness , any serious gamer would know that Square started hitting rock bottom ever since the merge with Enix. It started slowly to what it has become today. Very sad , but I'm keeping my hopes up for the new FF being worked on from scratch for the Wii U.
Enix should of stayed with what they did best back in the 90's which was Ogre Battle , I still dream of the day where I'd see a new Ogre Battle with the same mecanics as on the SNES but on any high end console we got today.
Square should of stayed SquareSOFT and kept on delivering awesome FF's.
Seriously , they should of stayed out of the MMO world and kept on delivering awesome epic classic RPGs on consoles.
Pretty much like Microsoft is doing atm with Age of Empires online , they know the console industry wasn't meant for them and they're strong point used to be in computer add ons such as joysticks , gaming mices / keyboards , joypads. Yes , yes , once upon time Logitech , Creative , Razer were crap compared to Microsoft. Since Xbox ,they are just releasing junk , but apparently they learned their lesson.
The point of this reply is : Not because your good in one thing means your good in everything. It's like contractors , if you meet someone able to do it all , your higly likely gonna get screwed. Not because you used to make kick ass age of empires 1 & 2 means you gotta do a crap job on AoE 3 to release more junk on the 360. The same goes to Square / Enix. Also, being hybrid sucks , just a thought.
SOE when they changed SWG and added cash shops to P2P games.
SE started going downhill with FFXII. I also think they could have saved themselves with XIV had they done their own thing and not go casual and instead going a more FFXI approach.
SE can still bounce back but they have to stick to what Final Fantasy games really are and that is none casual.
SOE would need a lot of work to get back on track including fire Smedley and decide on either P2P or F2P for each game (with cash shop) not a hybrid option.
Originally posted by Lexin I also think they could have saved themselves with XIV had they done their own thing and not go casual and instead going a more FFXI approach.
Except that they somehow managed to not make a casual or hardcore MMO, yet piss off both sides of the fence in the process. They kept nothing that worked from XI and added nothing that was better. It's really amazing and a blueprint for future companies on how not to make an MMO.
Comments
So SOE claiming they have 10 million registered accounts (not subscribers) to Free Realms cancels out SOE firing a third of their employees, shutting down several studios and canceling an MMO?
Interesting.
It's not a single moment. It's like the drip of a leaky faucet. Every day John Smedley gets one day older, SOE gets one day worse.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Blame the hackers for the firing of employees, shutting down studios, and cancelling of a game. When your code is stolen, sometimes it's best just to shut it down than dealing with what would happen from stolen code. Not only did SOE lose money while they were down for over a month, they also had to make it up to their fans with free time. As you are finding out, there is no such thing as free in business.
Power to the Sheeple
All those events happened prior to the hackers infiltrating SoE.
He who keeps his cool best wins.
You do release SOE fired a third of their employees, shut down several major studios and canceled an MMO a month before the hacks?
Yes. Point is, they are hating on SOE. SImply put, everything in the economy is tanking right now except the energy sector. Even Blizzard is feeling the heat. You can't call SOE fail because they are taking the same measures to save themselves as the rest of America is doing.
Power to the Sheeple
How many other game developers fired a third of their employees recently? Why do keep comparing SOE to Blizzard? They aren't even in the same league in terms of profitability and size.
SOE was always crap,
Square Enix however suffered from attempting to combine an MMO (XIV) and a single player game (XIII) on the same engine which the former did not get enough time to develop on before release resuling in an MMO that was missing a lot of features and lacking content. I wouldn't say they are out of touch with people anymore than they ever were (which means if you were a fan of XI you probably like a lot of their decisions, but the majority of the MMO community will never), in fact today they are a million times more engaging with the community than they ever were with XI.
I have admiration for Square Enix in that they are continuing to develop with a full team on XIV despite its troubles after launch, and once they fix their engine to fully support an MMO properly they have a lot of stuff planned that will appeal to former XI fans (maybe other people too, I don't know or care). Most people on this site may never play it again, but that shouldn't matter if they can pull off what they have planned I see it becoming a great game in a similiar fashion as XI's overall post-launch development.
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From an outsider's perspective it looks like SE got to compartmentalized as a company, and the head did not know what the body was doing.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
Ask Sigil, ask Mythic, ask Cryptic Studios, ask a whole lot of folks out there that have lost their jobs. Don't see you trolling EA when they cut out studios and layoff entire staffs sending only the very best to other parts of the company. Point is, people want to hate on SOE and Blizzard, I'll hate right back. Nothing wrong with those two companies. Sure, they both have made some bad choices, but so has every other company out there.
Power to the Sheeple
A bit over a year ago a person I knew from overseas was visiting. I never knew they had played Planetside and he started going on and on about how awesome it had been. I honestly had never paid much attention to planetside but he made it sound really good... different than most SOE games.
That's part of it to me.. in fact that part is the entire industry. You ever have an 8 bit computer.. did you game "back in the day"??
Just think of the wide variety of games that came out.. and we're not talking about 1 or 2 good games a year. It was hard to find enough money in the budget each month... ya amazingly once upon a time there was something worth buying every month.
Then again not everybody was making MMO's so the production times were shorter.
So anyway you have a severe lack of variety in todays market.. that affects everyone. As a customer you can only buy the same basic thing for so long. I mean this isn't a car.. knowing that you are going to replace it with the same thing. Take your favorite book .. read it. Then read it again and again and again and again.. imagine paying full price to read that same book every time. How long would it be your favorite book?
So on top of that Sony pissed off a lot of people. I'm not talking about a CU or NGE.
I remember playing EQ with a friend and there was some stuff going on in game. I'll just put it this way.. before I was on the interest team in UO I was a blue robe.. and I can guarantee there would have been bans for what went on.
In EQ.. GM shows up and asks what we want them to do. More or less the response was to enforce their EULA/ToS.. to which the GM said "these are our servers, if you don't like it leave".
They just seemed very arrogant because at the time who did they really compete with. Well I was always more a fan of UO so I just went back there.
Hell Blizzard had the same attitude towards its customers.. probably still does.
Rehash the same crap... treat your customers like crap.. eventually that catches up. When you are selling an optional form of entertainment... I don't actually have to buy your product. It doesn't affect me to not buy it.. but it certainly affects the retail end of things.
That said... I did go back to EQ around 2002 with a friend and we played that premium server that was like 40 bux a month. GM's treated you like gold there... actually did the things GM's should do etc
Come to think of it.. if a company made a game I liked.. and wanted to charge 40 bux a month but would actually enforce their rules.. I'd pay that much and play for a long time.
Sorry that I kind of got off track..
um ya so.. anyway variety in your products.. and treating your customers decently would get the "touch" back for most companies.
Square Enix is easy, they starting loosing their touch after FF VII was released and have slowling been slidding downward ever since...
SOE is kinda harder. They do have an habit of making too many expansions for their games and raising the levels too often, it makes old content pretty useless and fast passed by and constantly upsets the balance. Coding have always been their weakest point. But both EQ 1 & 2 are fine games. SWG had a great idea but they messed it up worse than any other company I ever seen. DCU is a fine game... for consoles, they shouldn't have made it for PC as well but instead focused on PS3.
Their best game is of course Everquest and McQuaide might have megalomania but he do have interesting ideas. If they go back and think what makes EQ fun EQ Next might actually be their comeback.
But they really lost it with their addition of an itemshop in EQ2, and the worst part is that almost all companies followed after soon after that.
Both SOE and SE might come back but both companies really need to look back and think about what made them great in the beginning and mix that with new ideas instead of just continue doing what they always done, but loosing a bit imagination everytime. EQ 3 needs to feel like a mix of old EQ and a new modern game we never played before. The next Final fantasy game must bring back the magic of FF VII but with a more modern combat system.
Clearly have both companies had a bad couple of years now but they can still turn around again.
Of those companies which ones fired 1/3 of their employees or more in the last year or so like SOE? And SOE makes bad choice after bad choice.
I'm going to put this to you in simple business terms. SOE is part of SONY! Guess what, SOE reports to SONY. Sony tells them to cut X millions from the budget, stuff is getting the axe. This is the problem with ALL the studios today when they ALL get bought up by a few big corporations. Regardless of how much or little you made, it's about growth over last year. Those that FAIL to grow obviously need to CUT expenses, regardless. This is why gamers and companies DO NOT mix well. Bottom line to a gamer is FUN. Bottom line to a CEO is money to shareholders. If you don't beat last year, you are failing regardless of what you have coming down the pipe. You think Mythic wanted to release WAR like it did? No, but it had no choice as EA calls the shots. Same with TOR at BioWare. CEOs of companies like SONY, Activision, Atari, EA... they all make more cash by cutting jobs and projects and closing studios. The more they "save" the parent company, the bigger their checks are. So stop blaming the devs and blame it on the CEOs of the companies that own them.
Power to the Sheeple
This is the third straight year in a row that SOE has laid off a percentage of its staff. SOE was making bad decisions that drove away the majority of their playerbase years before the economy had a down turn.
Blizzard keeps earning more money than the year before.
Sigil went out of business before the economic crash.
Mythic released their failure before the economic crash.
Cryptics CEO was the VicePresident of SOE for many years just before heading over to Cryptic and repeating the same exact mistakes there.
As a matter of fact, that gaming industry is very strong during the economic downturn.
SEO was in the situation is was in long before any of the excuses you are making. Long before the hacking. Long before the economic downturn.
It's true SOE is apart of Sony. Having said that SOE hasn't exactly released a successful MMO in awhile. I wonder if SOE even broke even on DCUO yet. SOE is more than likely spending more than it's receiving via revenue with two MMOs in development.
Agreed. Saying that, SOE doesn't have to when it buys up games for pennies on the dollar and just collects the cash. Saying that, all the other games they are creating is a BIG reason why the cuts happened. It cannot be cheap to develop many games at the same time. To me, that is a HUGE mistake. Look at the fubar DDO turned into when LOTRO was announced. LOTRO turned fubar and F2P, come to find out Turbine is working on another MMORPG. Look at CCP, same thing. The problem is, these companies try to do too much with too little and cuts are the end result when growth isn't achieved for parent companies or setbacks in development happen. CEOs do not respond well to less than expected growth. That means less millions in bonus cash for them.
Power to the Sheeple
I am not sure about Blizzard this year unless they release D3 this autumn. After all did they loose half a million Wow players so far and Starcraft sales were better last year. Still, they are not exactly laying off people.
Otherwise I agree. SOE have gone pretty badly for a while now even if the hacking thing didn't help them.
I also don't think Cryptic is repeating SOEs old misstake, they are making new ones instead. Like getting a very popular license, then make it into a half assed CORPG with both itemshop and monthly fees, I don't remember SOE doing that.
SIGILs problam was also that they had really bad programmers, and I mean awful. A good lead programmer and they might actually have released VG instead of selling it to SOE in beta shape. One of the SOE programmers that fixed the game up said it had the worst code he ever had seen.
MMOs are risky business and many companies don't cut it or live on the edge. SOE do actually have some good ideas and with a better lead designer (someone like Strain) and good coding they can still rise from the ashes. But I wish they could fire or move Smed, he continue to make bad decisions.
My point is SOE was a once one of the 'big boys' in terms of MMOs. There was a year and half time period in the mid-2000s when they had the #1 and #3 MMOs in terms of subscriptions.
SOE has fallen and fallen hard. They couldn't even fund new MMOs with the revenue from existing MMOs. The new 'big boys' can. SOE needs to release a successful and popular MMO and soon otherwise they won't be around much longer.
DDO didn't turn fubar when LOTRO was announced. It was fubar when it was in open beta and they wouldn't listen to people tell them it wasn't worth a monthly sub. A year or so later, they finally realized it and made the game FTP, and boom completely turned it around, although personally, I still think it sucks. That's beside the point though, LOTRO didn't have any effect on DDO.
The problem with SOE is their games have gone downhill the moment WoW launched and they decided to try and copy it's success. Which means, they saw the $$ Blizzard was pulling in and they went nuts. In a way it makes sense, from a business point of view, but they made the mistake of changing a game to suit it instead of just building a game to suit it. Every one of their games since EQ2 has been complete junk. The only thing smart they ever did was buy VG, but now they are messing that up by not developing it and throwing money at it. VG is more like EQ1 than EQ2 and is it's true spiritual successor.
Bah, and now we have news today of a microtransaction store opening up in DCUO. A game that is already on the downward slope and instead of adding content or fixing the game they add an E store? GREED is SOE's problem, failing economy or not. I'm tired of these corporate schticks thinking they can sell cheap product with no effort on their part. They'll learn when they are going bankrupt, the fools.
History has shown, QUALITY products, created with a ton of passion, sell very well. This copy/pasted casual junk we're getting these days in the form of DCUO, Champions Online, STO, Free Realms, these MOBA's, are all half-assed, money hungry attempts to grab your wallet, not your heart.
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Perhaps blizzard doesn't make as much this year as last, but their business has certainly been booming during the economic downturn as have other game companies. They point was that the problems of SOE predate the troubles in the economy.
[2]
SOE has a nasty habit of releasing incomplete games/expansions, ignoring the issues for to long, terrible communication with their customers and a very heavy focus on Cash Shop money grabs that only further their problems. Cryptic followed in those footsteps pretty well and to some extent accelerated those issues. It was pretty shocking how similar the two companies operated.
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Yeah, Sigil could of and should have. Very dissapointing.
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SOE has a lot of great ideas and their games have lots of potential. Seeing the legs constantly get cut from underneath them by poor management decisions is very saddening.
Heh , Square lost it's touch ever since they replaced the "Soft" by "Enix".
For SOE , actually I don't know , and never really cared.
But in all seriousness , any serious gamer would know that Square started hitting rock bottom ever since the merge with Enix. It started slowly to what it has become today. Very sad , but I'm keeping my hopes up for the new FF being worked on from scratch for the Wii U.
Enix should of stayed with what they did best back in the 90's which was Ogre Battle , I still dream of the day where I'd see a new Ogre Battle with the same mecanics as on the SNES but on any high end console we got today.
Square should of stayed SquareSOFT and kept on delivering awesome FF's.
Seriously , they should of stayed out of the MMO world and kept on delivering awesome epic classic RPGs on consoles.
Pretty much like Microsoft is doing atm with Age of Empires online , they know the console industry wasn't meant for them and they're strong point used to be in computer add ons such as joysticks , gaming mices / keyboards , joypads. Yes , yes , once upon time Logitech , Creative , Razer were crap compared to Microsoft. Since Xbox ,they are just releasing junk , but apparently they learned their lesson.
The point of this reply is : Not because your good in one thing means your good in everything. It's like contractors , if you meet someone able to do it all , your higly likely gonna get screwed. Not because you used to make kick ass age of empires 1 & 2 means you gotta do a crap job on AoE 3 to release more junk on the 360. The same goes to Square / Enix. Also, being hybrid sucks , just a thought.
SOE when they changed SWG and added cash shops to P2P games.
SE started going downhill with FFXII. I also think they could have saved themselves with XIV had they done their own thing and not go casual and instead going a more FFXI approach.
SE can still bounce back but they have to stick to what Final Fantasy games really are and that is none casual.
SOE would need a lot of work to get back on track including fire Smedley and decide on either P2P or F2P for each game (with cash shop) not a hybrid option.
mistake sorry.
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Except that they somehow managed to not make a casual or hardcore MMO, yet piss off both sides of the fence in the process. They kept nothing that worked from XI and added nothing that was better. It's really amazing and a blueprint for future companies on how not to make an MMO.