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But this is Sony
jyoung2k
Member UncommonPosts: 12
I'm a little shocked that so many people are excited about NEXT. Admittedly they had me it at first but then I started reading Smedly comments and the sirens and red flags went off.
Remember this is the company:
- that nickle and dimed people to death IN DC Universe (after saying it would always be a subscription)
- killed SWG with NGE and then refused to roll it back even as subscriptions died by 1000's a day
- mismanaged security and then treated us all like we were stupid while they took months to fix it
- ignored devs when they said that eq2 wasn't going to be "awesome"
Even now they are getting slammed by their own developers around NEXT.
“Reactionary circle jerk while looking to recapture faded glory” direct quote from glassdoor
I wanted to believe the hype but as a long time of EQ1/EQ2/SWG/DCU I know they will just screw it up.
I cant trust them again and I'm surprised so many of you are willing to... why?
Comments
you are taking glassdoor site seriously?
i could use the same site for any mmo to slam a game company
they are angry ex-employees that have been let go or fired - what do you expect?
EQ2 fan sites
Frankly, this part of your post negates everything else that you mention as SOE isn't Lucasarts and never has been.
Also, taking a glassdoor 'review' seriously is a bit silly
As long as Smed whispers the right sweet nothings, history doesn't seem to matter.
To be fair, it's not just Smed, there's been rather a theme of old faces making money off the same tired promises this year. Most of whom, like Smed, are smart enough to try and get as much money up front as possible, by the time reality inevitably sets in it won't matter and they'll laugh all the way to the bank.
At this point it wouldn't shock me to find out someone at SOE is working on "EverQuest Next 2: This Time We Really Mean It!".
The quote is what i took, not the pages and pages of developers saying how little they believe in the company. Many of them still work at the company as does the person I quoted.
BTW I checked a few other company's on Glassdoor just to address your comment and none of them rated as low as Sony. Most of the comments were people worried about being layed off.
But people want a new mmo so badly now they will pay huge sums of money to gain early access to some very questionable games.
EQNext? I'm surprised how many people haven't asked if this really wasn't one game split in two parts in order to start bringing in revenue sooner.
Massively praised them for keeping Landmark a secret, IMO it wasn't that hard since until very recently it did not exist as an independent entity until they decided to split it off.
But at the end of the day what do people really have to lose but their own money which they are freely choosing to give, which they don't even have to with it being F2P.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
name a popular mmo compamy and i'll show you a scathing glassdoor review
months ago, someone else used glassdoor as affirmation that SOE sucks
but there's people bitching about Blizzard, Turbine, EA sucks too at same site
EQ2 fan sites
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Blizzard-Entertainment-Reviews-E24858.htm
I'm not a fan of blizzard but 87% approval of the ceo and very few comments on management failures.
i'm referring to personal reviews (like the one you posted)
not overall satisfaction
EQ2 fan sites
Stop harping on the glassdoors part. Overall OP is correct, you know it, and are just trying to start an argument over something trivial in order to derail this thread, intentional or not.
@OP, good post, and I think most everyone who isn't looking through rose-colored glasses know it and are being cautious. I've already written the game off when they decided to redo the art-style into something childish with the excuse of "longevity" as their reason. It is a BS excuse to cater towards the lowest common denominator for #'s alone, and the F2P aspect means we'll be nickle and timed to death by amateurs whom barely know how to design a proper AI pathing system let alone a proper gameplay model.
I actually am lucky enough to know a very talented individual whom quit the SOE studios last year with the same presence of mind as the glass-doors quote. Not the same person either mind you which is why I was shocked at how honed in that glassdoors post is on what my friend keeps saying about SOE studios.
Glad I never worked for them
!
I think youre either derailing on purpose or youre not getting my point. I'm site-ing my own experience with Sony I mentioned a single quote and that seems to be what you keyed on.
Are you advocating that Sony is worthy of a fifth chance? That they'll get this one right?
Personally Im in wait and see mode but not optimistic at all. Why are you such a defender?
Bearknight - we will have to agree to disagree
you are well known for trashing SOE
I am well known for promoting SOE (i have no connections / affiliations to SOE, just fan)
let's leave it at that
EQ2 fan sites
I trash SOE because of how much I know about them, and have experienced by them
.
Though I found this part of the glassdoors post very enlightening as I too work in "Agile" Development.
[quote]
- Working with teams that say they are using "Agile" processes is frustrating. Compared to what other companies do to adhere to Agile, SOE just uses a term that allows management, Smed, or marketing, or seemingly anyone to throw more tasks (with very little requirements) into the "sprint". This caused delays, or frustrations. Sometimes a key part of the system being built would be completely dropped, but not because of priorities, but because necessary requirements were changed so many times that no one knew what they were trying to build. By the time it reached QA no one was able to tell us what it was we were supposed to test in detail.
[/quote]
That to me tells me two things:
-This person was part of QA that was let go.
-The "Agile" process can be screwed up severely by people whom have not a clue wtf it's all about, and this screams verbally that SOE has no idea how to use it properly. I'll text my friend and see if they agree specifically about this part
.
I'm kind of wondering this about this as well. What's the point of this thread?
Let's just say what you are stating ends up being true, just being made by $oE means it will be a vicious attempt to harm each player on a personal level. Are you telling me that as mostly adults we cannot be excited about something promising and then have it not work out? Call me crazy but I'd rather be excited up front, innocent until proven guilty, and enjoy that whole time before shrugging and moving on to something else. We still have a long ways to go on Next as far as features but with Landmark they seem to be making it happen.
I understand that SoE has been involved in making some players really upset but it's pretty clear how much is based on emotion.
offtopic
my profession is in IT management / developer in vertical markets
i agree with the criticism of Agile and i agree it's frustrating when guidelines are not followed
from my experience, its par for the course for corporate IT shops
especially with ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
EQ2 fan sites
So, by that extension, any site that allows people to vent their opinions should be discredited? Only positive opinions allowed?
Look at gaming forums, any of them. Even the most popular ones that retain healthy player-bases and bring in the $$$ have critics. Positive and negative feedback comes from a company's customers, the consumers of their service, as well as their employees, the workforce that makes their service possible. I am as interested in hearing the negatives as well as the positives from as many sources as possible to get a better picture of the company as a whole, and the quality of their product.
The reviews that I have read by old and current employees seem fairly consistent and well written. Certain trends can be seen as well. If it was one employee with a single opinion I wouldn't put too much stock in that. However, there is a larger pool of feedback than that, giving pros and cons to their experiences. Rather than entirely dismissing all those people, I choose to see value in their perspectives.
To the OP:
I'm taking a stance of cautious realism insofar as EQN is concerned. Yes, SOE has a history. I've certainly been quite verbal on many forums in lambasting them for stupid things they have done. However, let's give judgement once the game is out.
Sounds to me like your saying that anything that talks down about what you love must be wrong.
let's be clear here, glass door is a site that many businesses from many industries use to get a handle on what the employees in their company think. It's also used by competition and job seekers. It's the opinion of the employee so subject to the natural taint that brings, but still, it is a usable metric. As a corporate level employee, being able to have that kind of transparency can be useful in solving cultural issues within the company.
If your a fan of SOE, that's great, but the first step in solving a problem is admitting there is one. Sounds like SOE isn't a great place to work, so now they need to really address what is going on and try to fix it. For the record, if that's true, it starts at the very top and works it's way down.
My Thoughts on Content Locust
i freely admit SOE has warts and I do not trust Smed farther than i can throw him
like Bearknight,
i too have a long history of playing SOE games and been on the receiving end of poor decisions
the difference between us - I still enjoy SOE games and I recognize the good w the bad
--------------------------
a summary of the OP:
I wanted to believe the hype but as a long time of EQ1/EQ2/SWG/DCU I know they will just screw it up.
I disagree w the Op that EQ1 / EQ2 / DCUO are screwed up (I didnt play SWG)
regarding Glassdoor ive gotten into long debates about personal reviews in the past on mmorpg.com
and didn't want to get into that debate again
its like debating xfire
EQ2 fan sites
Besides my first MMO was EQ, I played SWG from launch to NGE and played EQ2 for 4 years. SOE has screwed up before I grant that point to the OP but the good vastly outweighs the bad to me. So using the OP's own logic of past performance being an indicator of future outcomes I draw the opposite conclusion.
I invite you all to live in the past. It's very comfortable there. I'm going to continue to look to the future.
Refugee from UO,EQ,AC,AC2,AO,DAOC,L2,SB,HZ,CoH,PT,EQ2,WoW,VG,SWG,EVE,WAR,DF,MO,AI,GA,LOTRO, SWTOR... Gw2 on Deck
SOE has made more good games than bad so of course I 'trust them'. More importantly the things they claim are in the game are things that should have been in the genre already. Most games like a Wildstar or TESO are pretty much DOA to me because they offer nothing new.
Things change, people change, companies change... is that really so hard to accept?
Of course it would be satisfying to "punish" soe and smed for what they did to SWG and a bunch of other titles, and yes the arogance and ignorance and yadda, yadda, yadda... Personally I find it sleazy that the same people who destroyed one of the best sandbox mmo experiences are now the ones smugly at the front of the new trendy frreform sandbox crusade.
But on the other hand, who knows? Things change, people change.... What I do know is that Planetside 2 is a very cool game and it shows a high degree of maturity in game design - it knows EXACTLY what it wants to accomplish, what kind of experience to present to the players and then does it quite succesfully. We can talk about whether you like or dislike this experience or is it something you're looking for in a mmo, but as clarity of vision and its execution go, this is basically it. This is what gives me confidence that EQNext and Landmark may be worth my attention - most mmos which failed had no clear vision what they are were all about, recent shutting down of WAR and the latest Firefall scandal are good examples.
It seems SOE folks (Smed?) finally grew up and realized that if you want to make something of quality it needs focus and unwavering dedication. The best games can be summed up in one or two short sentences which explain their exact appeal. I can see this clarity of vision in the two EQ games, just as I can see it in PS2. As for the dedication and sticking to the game beyond the first rough patch (hello EA) PS2 is another great example - SOE is still sticking to it with all its guns and it is paying off.
As for the F2P thing... even though there is pretty much ZERO practical incentive to buy with real cash in PS2 i know folks who sunk 100s of dolars into the game... You don't need to twist-arm your customers into coughing up; if they enjoy themselves enough they will happily chip in, just like with any other hobby - another lesson it seems SOE managed to learn.
So, we'll see. I'm getting all kinds of positive vibes from EQ titles and if I turn out to be wrong, no great loss. There are plenty of great games out there already and trying it out won't cost a penny, so...
I was trying to say heres why I don't trust them, why do you think its different this time?