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Lucasarts called the shots with SWG and SOE cares about their fans
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I agree with the last three paragraphs. I disagree with the start f the post, I dont think SoE's customer service outside of SWG incident is noticeably better or worse than anyone else's. You hear stories about other games too, but anything dealing with SoE gets more press. People dont want to hear bad things about other companies. They want to hear them about SoE.
As an example, take Trion. Oh their customer service actually is probably best in the business. But in one year they had two security flaws. The first of which had to be solved by a customer. Does this get mentioned often? No, because people dont want to talk bad about Trion. But SoE? People will gladly talk about their hack. people were HAPPY when they got hacked.
People are quick to say SoE doesnt listen to their players, but conveniently forget that they listened to their players often with EQ. Things like easier transportation and easier corpse recovery? These arent things SoE changed on a whim. They were direct responses to customer feedback. Look at how much better EQ2 got after its first year.
SoE does have some pretty big issues. The management somewhere along the way, Smedley or above SMedley, still seems to have little clue what they are doing with some things. Communication is out of whack somewhere, it seems as if they arent allowed to communicate some things. They are definitely disfunctional, and I think its a result of their parent company as much as anything, because Sony is a damn mess too and SoE clearly got worse once placed under more control (when they were under SMP it was hands off, SCE was much more hands on). Or it could be the whole SWG really messed them up.
Is SoE greedy? Of course, they are in it to make money. Are they more greedy than most of their competition? Hell no. They historically work their asses off for the games that have the playerbase to warrant it.
Read this then from Raph Koster
"Smed is a guy who cares deeply about customers, whom I have personally seen spend hours on the phone talking to just one in order to try to resolve their issues."
"And yet all these guys regularly get vilified in forums regardless of what their actual roles were or what they feel about the subject, in large part because their names happen to be public. In the end, it all just feels a bit unfair, in large part because only fragments of the story are even available. And the story is going to stay unavailable because of confidentiality agreements."
Anybody who wants to shoot down SOE is because they are there in public, and you want someone to blame, well you are wrong.
Seriously the last thing they want is to annoy customers, and lose them. At the end of the day they do what they think is best for themselves and the customers.
Smedley wakes up and thinks "Oh what a wonderful day, lets think up something else to annoy our fans and make them quit. NOT. Get real.
LA just cared for themselves with SWG, they just thought people would migrate over to SWTOR from SWG, and still keep the same revenue as they got with SWG, and any loss would be overshadowed by the forecasted huge income from SWTOR. Also EA seems to have had something with it. These 2 companies are just greedy, SOE are not, otherwise they would not have kept EQmac running.
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I am truly amazed that even in it's "death" people cannot let it "die". Man, if this is the extent of one's life, disconnect, unplug, and go get some fresh air in all seriousness.....
Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box. ~ Italian proverb
What? Lucasarts and SOE are not yet dead
Star Trek Online - Best Free MMORPG of 2012
Man, its just like in sports. In the NFL about 3 years ago it became real trendy to say "this guy got outcoached". As if a fan who has never played a down in the NFL could even remotely make the distinction between wether someone coached good or bad. We watch the game, but in reality we only know what the media tells us, but more often than not the media just makes shit up or just speculates so we can speculate about what they're speculating about. The NFL is a tight knit and very small fraternity and only a select group of people on the planet can claim to know what goes on there.
Exact same situation here, you need to stop claiming you know jack shit about jack shit, it just makes you look foolish. We got the NGE, thats what we know, beyond that ya'll dont know shit.
I dont know how closely you folloewd the "Official save star wars galaxies" group on facebook, but if you did, you would know about the visit from LA and EA to SOE´s office and the result of it.
SOE didnt want to close SWG, that we can be sure of.
Im talking about the NGE. I think we all know SOE wouldnt want to lose a big franchise name from their stable, even if that game wasnt that popular anymore.
And we can see just from SOE's habits and deduce logically that they dont like to shut games down. They kept MxO on there for 2 years longer than any other publisher likely would have.
But as for behind closed door meetings between LA and SOE and who pulled the trigger its been 6 years and people are still debating this shit, we dont know, we'll never know.
Even if it was LA that told SOE to change the game ( and I believe it was) SOE failed in their design and implementation of those changes. It is pretty obvious that SOE was completely incapable of producing a quality product. Does anyone really believe that LA asked SOE to develop a buggy, half finished, pile of crap that was the NGE? LA wanted more money from their IP and SOE could NEVER deliver a quality game that would generate the kind of income that they wanted.
Everyone knows that the SW IP is just a whore that Lucas pimps out when he wants some cash. If SOE had been a better developer none of the whole SWG mess would have happened. SWG launched badly, patched badly and performed badly. I can only blame LA for the direction of the game. The quality has to fall on to SOE.
Personally, i was happy with NGE and the game in general when it closed. And id love to see the NGE re-surrected, but we´re not allowed to discuss that here.
SOE did produce a quality game, but LA wanted a WOW clone so got SOE to make it into one. If LA let SOE work on SWG as it was launched as, fixing bugs, and adding content, it would have ended up being a more solid quality product
The NGE was only a buggy mess because it was code (NGE) on top of code (CU) on top of code (pre-CU).
Bioware or any other company would have been stuck in the same position. SOE last year stated they knew what the problem was and they were capable of fixing it, but it is was not a viable venture, as probably meant that SWG would need to be shut down for a while, and/or that LA was not willing to pay SOE for the "clean up"
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No SOE did not produce a quality game in SWG. It was a buggy mess from the start. The code on that game was bad from the begining long before the CU or NGE ever hit. Every patch or bug fix just brought more problems. SOE was incompetent. It was pretty obvious there was some deep coded issues with SWG that SOE could not figure out in a timely fashion and that was their job. Saying you found the answer 7 years after launch is pretty pathetic.
You may not like the direction that LA wanted to take the game. I sure didn't. I just can't lay the blame for the piss poor quality of SWG from the time it launched until the day they shut it down on LA.
I played the game quite a bit over the years and I do miss it but I refuse to see it for anything but what it was...a rushed to launch, badly coded, mess of a game that should stand as a lesson to all developers of what not to do to your game and its players.
EQ2 is not a buggy mess, so why is SWG? Answer = LA
SOE did not operate under their own time frames and pushed to get things fast by LA. All MMOs are buggy to begin with, even SWTOR is, but if they were left to fix things up and not totally change things, it could have ended up a quality product.
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If SOE could not get the job done properly in the time frame that LA established they should never have signed up for the job in the first place. Their greed blinded them and their incompetence drove the game in to the ground. Yes most MMOs launch with some bugs. SWG was incomplete at launch and what was there did not work very well. There is a difference between bugs and a unfinished, broken game. SWG was most definitely broken at launch. The only game I remember with a worse launch was AO.
I don't believe that SOE was ever capable of fixing the bugs and improving the game. It showed in the first year the game was live. How many patches broke some other part of the game? It happened time and time again.
As far as SOE caring about it's customers how many times did they just blatantly lie to us and I'm not even talking about the NGE? It was a constant. Do you forget how many times they promised changes to smuggler?
SWG could have been a great game. If not for the lack of vision on LA's part and the total incompetence on SOE's part.
To follow up, as long as a game is turning a profit like SWG did with its 5-10k of subs maybe, LA would have let that ol' dog hunt instead of shot it. Those of us that did play knew the end could come at anytime but also knew the systems were not avaible in any other game.
I never said SOE is not at fault for the troubles with SWG. I would never say that. I played all eight years of the game. I can't. But "hand in hand" SOE and LA made the decisions on the course of SWG.
Lets just see how LA reguards TOR when the time comes to make it F2P ... and it will come.
Haha... SoE cares about their fans...
People actually believe a word Smed says? I'm surprised there's even a thread on this. SOE caring about their fans? LOL! Sure, just like they cared for us fans when we left after the NGE debacle, and the underhanded trick of sneaking in the NGE update immediately after the Trials of Obi-Wan expansion pack came out, with those changes completely negating chunks of that expansion.
Even after the majority of players that left after the NGE, SOE refused to undo the NGE.
It's amazing that no matter what kinda stupid stuff a company or person does, there's always apologists defending every craptastic action.
WOW
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
I really cant beleve people are still dimwitted enough to think that SoE even had the option of doing this.....
Its kinda evident that LA was set on the NGE with how Nancy and Torres were feverishly spinning this. Both of who were employees of Lucas Arts.
20 years from today....there will still be Anti SOE fanbois of Pre-NGE that refuse to understand that regardless of who ordered the NGE and CURB................LA ran the content show no matter what ideas SOE had.
MMO History: 2528 days in SW:G
LA still won't give us another X-Wing, Tie-Fighter, or XvsTie. So I'm going to point all the blame on LA. Seriously fans have been clamoring for an updated game of one of those for years, and although SWG managed to get it pretty good, it still didn't have the sweetness of that first Death Star run or when your Vader's Wingman.
SOE were more than capable of fixing the bugs and improving the game, but held back by LA. If LA was not in the picture, and SW was their IP, they would have done a grand job.
SOE never lied, they were under NDA from LA. I worked for many companies, and kept taking orders for stuff that will end up either becoming cheaper the next day or go obsolete, and have to pretend that there is no change coming, when I know there is. If I said anything before they made the announcement themsleves, I would have lost my job. This stuff happens everywhere.
SOE does care, there is doubt about that, and the problem is that they care too much. Perhaps if they shut down Vanguard and EQmac, then they would not get into a pickles (which is SOE downfall) and then have to partner with ProSieben. You can not have it all, but SOE sure do try to give it to us.
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You really think that LA dictating a direction stopped them from fixing bugs? You're deluding yourself.
More content was higher priority than fixing bugs, but SWTOR should not have these problems as are supposed to have a team for content and another team for fixing bugs.
Other MMOs like City of Heroes and STO and no doubt all of them even WOW get worse with more content as well, as code for the new stuff contradicts with the code for the old stuff, but content always takes more priority over a few niggles
Basically all complaints about SOE are just plain unreasonable.
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Rarely, have I ever seen such blatant apologism for a company that continually and repeatedly dumped on it's paying customers for years.
In regards to SOE and SWG, I suggest people take a look at:
http://mmofringe.com/forum/15-Star-Wars-Galaxies/27-A-Complete-History-of-SOEs-Lies
It lists the 20 biggest lies SOE/Smed put out in regards to SWG. The in famous unedited "om-nom-nom" and Freeman public statements are in the same section. Some highlights:
1. SWG wont launch until its ready - SOE repeatedly told us this game wont launch until its ready to go. This early on was to include space, JTL wasnt ever supposed to be an expansion. Lets also not forget key components not included at launch like player cities, vehicles, and jedi. As a beta player, I still remember the notice in beta forum that the game was going gold in 2 weeks. Everyone agreed it was a huge mistake but SOE ignored us.
5. Combat Revamp - whatever you want to call it, this was meant as a reward for the vets who stayed around and played a broken game. Talk about a slap in the face when SOE announces the CU...a system as the devs told me at Celebration 3 was meant to "have a more broad appeal". This was SOE's 1st attempt at screwing over its current community for the wow crowd. All the promised fixes never happened. The armorsmith rep quit and was banned after he started a massive protest over changes they never asked for. In fact the CU brings in many more bugs than it fixes and never balanced anything.
7. FRS - CU disables the end-game for jedi, our force ranking system. SOE tells us its being worked on. Later they state its almost done and just awaits final approval from LA. Of course we learn there wont ever be a FRS system and the nerfs we've been getting oover the past 6 months were done on purpose to weaken jedi into a regular class. For me personally, this is one of the more disgusting lies as it was obviously done to keep us jedi players paying.
10. Expansion - SOE presells an expansion with several promised features. One desired item is a creature handler necklace that will allow for the taming of higher lvl pets. Im not sure if that necklace was ever found but it didnt matter because 1 stinkin day after the nge launched Torres of LA announces the revamp of the game and removal of over 24 professions.
17. 6 month promises - Smedley has repeatedly made the 6 month promise for fixes. His very 1st post following the CU debacle asked the players to give SOE 6 months to get things fully working. He then makes the same promise after the NGE launches, needing 6 more months. Ironically, the post after nge is almost identical to the cu one (asking for time to fix things) and yet somehow the gullible desperate players buy into it AGAIN. Later SOE promises major revamps to each profession each coming within a month or two o each other. Later after MONTHS of no publishes and silence (the swg forums were literally rioting), SOE announces yet ANOTHER series of profession revamps. Typically, the pathetic player base thanks SOE devs in posts for answering their concerns. A year into the NGE, it remains broken, unfinished, with no end in site.
That is just a taste of what is in there, and not one bit is opinion. SOE/Smed did all of those things and every single one screwed over their paying customers in one way or another.
And as others have said, LA NEVER, ever, programed a single line of code even once. That SWG was a broken mess, aside from all decisions on what shape and direction content should take, is wholly and completely on SOE and their incompetence.
And SOE does not give an eff, up to this day about the players. All they care about is that people keep paying, and they will say literally anything to ensure that happens.
P.S. Edit: and that is only about SWG. Smed and SOE have lied many, many times to customers about their other games, including EQ2 (especially in regards to putting in Station Cash, which Smed himself came out and promised would not happen, only to have it happen shortly later) and that had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with LA. It was SOE lying to their customers, again.
Your post had a handful of words yet it said nothing, it reminded me of crazy hairdo's. Perhaps in another vodka or two you could try again?